


Thestral's Calling: Part II: Gathering

by Arinus



Series: Calista Snape [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Childhood Trauma, Dark, Dark Magic, Death Eaters, Emotionally Repressed, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Feels, Family Issues, Female-Centric, Horror, Memories, Mental Health Issues, Mentor Severus Snape, Occlumency (Harry Potter), Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Parent Severus Snape, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Rise of Voldemort, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Severus Snape-centric, Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25944724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arinus/pseuds/Arinus
Summary: The worst has come to pass, and the Dark Lord is risen. Severus Snape is once more compelled into his role as a double agent as Dumbledore calls upon his long-ago promise to protect Harry Potter at all costs, but is Severus still willing to keep that promise when he has his own child to protect?Calista Snape lives each day in terror, knowing that the Ministry's tenuous hold on Azkaban is the only thing standing in the way of her infamous mother's freedom, but she does not know there are more immediate dangers, other eyes already upon her.Gerald Boot struggles with the horrific pace of his new Occlumency lessons, grimly understanding there is more at stake than Calista is letting on; every day, he feels further behind and she feels further away.Around the world, darkness falls, the Dark Lord's forces rise, and thestrals take wing, as the Second Wizarding War begins.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Calista Snape [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1047206
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	1. Promises

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: T+/M for violence, language, adult themes, some mild to moderate sexual content between consenting adults (not explicit). General recommendation 15+
> 
> Trigger Warnings: References to past child abuse and PTSD, somewhat graphic descriptions of injury and violence.
> 
> While it is not required to have read the previous two stories, it is recommended, because relationships between main characters have been previously established and some prior events will be referenced throughout.

Calista woke in a familiar dark to a familiar voice, nursing a familiar pain.

"Calista," her father said, and even at such a low pitch, she could hear the wary edge in his tone. She sat up, and familiar stone walls materialised around her, illuminated by the tiny, silver-blue glow of a witchfire nightlight.

"I'm — was I dreaming again?" she murmured, puzzled; she could not _remember_ dreaming, and yet, along with the familiar scenery, she could feel the sharp ache of a remembered pain seeping into her skin.

She started to sit up, and the ache shot across her body in several directions, like lightning bolts; whatever dream she'd had, this time, the heat of the knife had not been limited to her back —

"No, Calista," her father's face swam into view from the shadows to the right of her bed, white and tight-lipped and grim. "It wasn't a dream." he said, but she didn't even need him to say that for all of it to come swirling back to her.

_Moody's fingers, like a vise on her arm; the slick, nauseating creep of the Imperius Curse, claiming the first layer of her mind for its own; pain and blood, and darkness; stark black lines on her father's arm, a terrible truth she understands written between them; Harry Potter, face hollow and arm caked in blood: He's back. Voldemort's back._

"I — no, please tell me it isn't true," she said, frantically trying to unwrap herself from blankets that did not seem inclined to cooperate, "He can't really have come back. It's… Potter was lying, the marks were — I was delirious, I imagined them —"

Severus' hand settled heavily on her shoulder. "Now would be a terrible time to start lying to you; I have only a few minutes before I must go, and it is imperative that you listen to me, that you do exactly as I say."

"Go where?" She could feel dread coiling in her heart, before he even answered, because she _knew_ ; she had heard it herself, if her swooning, dizzied memories were to be believed.

"You know where I must go," he said, grimly, "And you have a part to play in ensuring I return safely."

"No!" Calista renewed her struggle against the blankets, against him, against the truth. "You can't go to him, he'll —"

"Listen to me," her father commanded, and it was as if he were leaning over her again, face white and voice breaking; something in his tone silenced her at once. She thought the sky might have been wheeling overhead, still, for all the sense of reality she felt.

"I will return," her father said, quietly, eyes fixed on her face, "I cannot tell you, yet, precisely how long I will be gone. It might be hours; more likely, it will be days. There are several things I need you to promise me, and Calista — I need you to understand, that I have never extracted a promise from you that was as important to keep as this; but if you can promise me that you will do exactly as I say, I promise you that I _will_ return safely. As long as you keep your word, I will be able to keep mine."

Calista felt the world spinning, again; this could not be happening, none of this could be happening… but the weight of her father's gaze, of her father's trust, settled into her heart, telling her with no uncertainty that it _was_.

She swallowed her protests. "Tell me what I need to do," she said, quietly, instead.

"I need you to stay here, at Hogwarts," her father began, and Calista felt a scowl begin to twist her mouth, as she braced herself for a lecture about staying put, and behaving, and ensuring her own safety above anything else… and _then_ :

"Circumstances may arise that require a message to be passed on to the Headmaster very quickly. Our ability to connect through legilimency has always been particularly strong; I believe that with the use of an anchor point, it may be possible for me to reach as far as Hogwarts, as long as my target is _you —_ and as long as you are willing to allow me to place one."

 _What?_ "Of course," Calista said quickly, stumbling over the shock of being asked to do something useful; why was he even asking? Of course she would do it.

Her father's frown deepened. "This will not be easy, Calista. The presence of an anchor point will significantly reduce my ability to shield you from my stronger emotions. You will feel my fear. like an alarm in your mind." His eyes bore grimly into hers. "You may even sense pain. I cannot keep this from you, and still maintain the external barriers I need to, against everyone else; but you _must not_ act on anything you feel from me, other than to relay information to Dumbledore. Do you understand all of this?"

Calista nodded, grimly, despite the tight feeling of apprehension in her throat; what other choice did she have?

"Promise me," Severus commanded, "Promise that no matter what you sense, no matter what I tell you — even if you think you hear me call for help — that you _will not leave the castle grounds_."

"I — I promise," she whispered, heart hammering, "But you have to — you promised you would return safely, if I agreed…"

"And so I shall," her father said, "As long as you are true to your word. Now, are you ready?"

She nodded, tightly, as Severus withdrew his wand.

" _Legilimens._ "

She did not tell him which memory she had chosen, to tune their minds to each other; and yet, she could feel the same one resonating within the fibres of his mind that brushed against her outermost mental wall; perhaps it was on both of their minds, already.

Just as she had in the memory, Calista reached her own consciousness forward, and guided her father through the wall before him. As the threads of his own memory wove themselves through the fabric of her version of it, she saw a glimpse of what her mind had been like, in his eyes, so many years ago.

It was a wispy web of broken and thinning threads, a feeble defense against the certain madness frothing below; in the distance, a terrible, ominous barrier glittered.

 _I love you, Calista,_ he had told her, silently, _My strong, clever daughter_ , and it had made her stronger; over time, many such words had made her strong enough to create barriers of her own, solid and great, that rivalled even the one that had once kept her prisoner in her own mind. If there was a chasm, still, of madness, then it was impossibly far away, held at bay by everything she had become in the meantime.

"Tell no one where I have gone," her father said, quietly, once the connection was anchored. "To everyone but Dumbledore, you do not know. In fact, it is safer for both of us if you seem to know nothing at all, except for what everyone will have heard already — that the Tournament has been cancelled; Moody was an imposter; we do not yet know what he has done with the real man; you have heard rumours, only, about the Dark Lord's return, but who knows if Potter is telling the truth?"

 _Moody._ A sudden spark of memory lit her up; there was something important about him, wasn't there? About what had happened… she felt a sick, heavy dread settle in her gut.

"Moody — the false one — _Crouch_ —" the name twisted its way out of her mouth, "He knows I can resist the Imperius Curse. He had me under it, when I cursed — well, when I _tried_ to curse him."

Severus swore, quietly; she saw the lines of his mouth go thinner, the shadows around it grow deeper. And then:

"There is little we can do about that, now, except hope that he has not found it interesting enough to report to his master; ironically, it may turn out to be fortunate, in this regard alone, that you lost the duel to him. It may serve to make you seem less appealing, in the immediate future, as a potential recruit."

Calista succumbed to a shiver; she did not think, this time, that it was related to her earlier blood loss.

"Less… less appealing in the _immediate_ future? What happens after that?"

"At this point, the immediate future is all we can afford to consider," her father said, ominously; and then, abruptly, he stood.

"I have brought your old school trunk here; since that is where I found your journal, I assume that is where you are now hiding things of a personal nature; and since I doubt you want to spend the next several days in a bloodied nightdress, I brought whatever clothes were in it, as well. The fireplace in my office no longer connects anywhere outside of the castle, so you will need to ask the Headmaster if you must make any outside calls. As long as your request is reasonable, he will allow it."

Calista felt panic grip her throat, as she read between the lines of his speech. "You think the Dark Lord will send someone to search our house."

"It is not outside of the realm of possibility," Severus acknowledged, "Especially since I did not come when he first called."

He did not need to tell her that the Dark Lord would be displeased; she felt her insides begin to burn with the need to stop him, to protest, to beg him not to go; but she might as well beg him not to breathe, because she knew as well as he did that desertion would never be forgiven; she knew in every terrible detail what would happen if he did not answer the summons at all. Besides, she had already given her word, and…

 _And I have to trust that he will keep his_.

Their joined memory flickered again, as if seeking her attention.

_She's floating among the wreckage of her own mind; his fingers pass through the image of her, the representation of what's left of her core._

' _I'm going to come back,' he promises, before he gives her the words that will allow her to hold on, until then._

Her own memory played back, in answer. It had been cold, and lonely, and frightening, waiting; she had played the words back so many times they hardly sounded real, anymore; but still, she had gone on repeating them, using them as a shield against the rot of her mother's will. It had not been easy, in those dark hours, to believe him; but still, in the end — just when she had almost given up hope — he had come back.

"You shall have the freedom of the castle, for the most part, until I return," Severus said, deceptively matter-of-factly, "You will be in touch with the Headmaster, of course, and you may use the library, or visit your old common room. I'm certain there are many here who will be pleased to see you. You've already been given enough blood-replenishing potion, though it will take hours yet for you to feel completely recovered."

There was a small scraping sound, as he slid a glass jar across the tiny night stand in her direction; she caught the glitter of the night light across the smooth surface.

"Essence of dittany. You should apply it every few hours until the scars fade; this likely will not be enough, so once you are on your feet again, you will need more," his eyes shifted. "You can help yourself to the hospital wing's stores, or you can use my workroom to make some. Ah — and as to the matter of pests — your wretched cat is in my kitchen, and Boot has been told where you are, largely to prevent him from showing up at our house at an _inconvenient_ time."

A jolt of panic rose in her throat. She had not even thought of that; in fact, since putting his call out and tumbling through her father's fireplace, she had not thought of Gerald at all.

"The Headmaster is willing to admit him to the castle to see you, if you wish," her father said, "But you must stay guarded about what you are doing here, even from him. If you cannot, we will have no choice but to modify his memory."

He stepped back, and Calista saw him lifting his travelling cloak from the chair he had evidently brought in from the kitchen; it was not the chair she remembered, and _that_ of all things made her heart rate ratchet higher.

"This shouldn't be allowed — former students aren't allowed back," Calista stammered, because she desperately needed something, _anything_ , to feel normal, mundane, "I shouldn't be allowed back in the common room."

"No, I suppose not," Severus agreed, buttoning his cloak. "But I requested it, and the Headmaster had to agree." She saw his fingers slip, twice and then three times, on the same button. "You see — it turns out that at this particular time, I have an inordinate amount of… _leverage_. Perhaps I should have requested a raise, as well."

He smirked, thinly and humourlessly, and finally managed to thread the last button of his cloak.

 _No! Don't go!_ The panic in Calista rapidly crescendoed, and she had to bite her tongue, hard enough to taste copper, to keep from screaming for him not to leave.

Perhaps he sensed her anguish; perhaps he shared it. He came to her bedside again, and — as if she were small again — pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes; but perhaps it was not a nostalgic gesture, as she had supposed, because he locked his eyes on hers again.

 _No matter what happens_ , her father said, in the quiet corner of her mind where he had anchored himself, _Do not forget what you have promised._

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was eerily quiet when Severus' feet touched down on the spot he had been summoned to. It was a thick, heavy, unnatural silence, one that set his teeth on edge and he knew, instantly, that no matter how silent it was, he was not alone; he was not unobserved.

Jagged tombstones loomed all around him, some perched so precariously over crooked hills that it looked almost as if the occupants of those resting places had decided to rise; his heartbeat quickened, his fingers tightened around his wand, as he acknowledged the distinct possibility that it was true.

His eyes darted left, and right, taking in more of the macabre scenery; thankfully, he saw no sign of an Inferi army. Instead, he saw the hulking shape of an old, crumbling house, and then a bolt of cold fear struck straight to his heart, as his forearm tingled, growing uncomfortably warm.

There was no mistaking the sensation, or the silent, wordless command.

The Dark Lord knew he was here, and the Dark Lord was calling him forward to present himself.

He walked towards the crumbling manor house, as slowly as he dared, fortifying his mental walls as he went, concentrating on slowing his hammering heart, evening his sharp breaths. It would not do at all for the Dark Lord to see his distress; it would make a harder sell, for what he had to do, what he had to be.

The door swung open as he approached it; a crouching, pudgy, nervous-looking man with thinning hair and small, watery eyes sneered at him.

"Sh— shouldn't even let you in," the man wheezed, gripping the edge of the door with an unearthly, silvery hand; Severus let out a small, derisive hiss and stepped forward, leaving the other man no choice but to yield, to step aside.

If it had not been for the hand, and Potter's tale, Severus wasn't certain he even would have recognised the man that now leered nervously beside him. The years had done a number on him, that was true, but the Dark Lord's service — or perhaps it was twelve years as a rat — had done much more. Whatever spark of arrogance had reflected on him from his friends, from the glow of being placed in Gryffindor, had diminished, leaving behind a cringing, twitching, pitiful pile of rat-flesh with eyes.

"Why are you here, Snape?"

Severus turned away from Pettigrew in utter contempt.

"Where is the Dark Lord?" he asked, quietly, "I will answer to no one but him."

" _Yes_." Severus suppressed a shiver as a high, cold voice rang out from further inside the house. "Bring our guest to me, Wormtail. Ah, and take his wand."

" _Expelliarmus_ ," Severus said, in a careless sort of tone, Disarming Pettigrew before he had even opened his mouth. He added another pair of hexes, jolting Pettigrew with a bolt of spelled lightning, and sending him crashing against the nearest wall for good measure.

 _Not so tough without your friends_ , he observed, and he let the hatred, the derision for Pettigrew, and the aura of aggression from the spells waft through his mind like a perfume. It would only help, now.

He followed the cold voice further into the manor, until he reached a small room near the back, where a fireplace burned brightly, lighting the room more effectively than any of the others. A high-backed armchair was silhouetted against the flames, facing the doorway, but it was unoccupied.

He stopped, at the doorway to the room.

"I have returned, My Lord," Severus said, slipping his wand reluctantly back into his pocket. He knew with utter certainty that the Dark Lord was in that room, whether he could see him or not, he was just as certain that whether or not he lived long enough to carry out his plan might well depend on how he entered it.

"Have you now, Snape?"

A voice he had not heard in a very long time; then there was a soft flurry of motion, and the younger Bartemius Crouch stood before him, mouth curved in an arrogant smile, wand pointed dead at his face.

"Barty," Snape acknowledged him, deliberately choosing to use the man's first name; and then he answered the question: "I have."

"We shall see," Barty said, and then: " _Accio Snape's wand._ "

It wasn't in his hand, so he couldn't be Disarmed; he snarled, reaching for his wand as it sailed past his fingers and into Barty Crouch, Jr.'s. He should have been prepared, should have been faster, but he was so focused on the other presence he _knew_ was in that room —

" _Crucio_."

Severus let his voice howl out of his mouth, let his knees and the outer parts of his mind cave in to the pain, and he pulled the core of himself tight behind his barriers, as his agonised body was dragged further into the room. Retreating didn't lessen the pain; nothing would. But it did let him keep his mind, his sanity, at least for the moment.

When the haze of pain cleared, he was in the armchair, magical ropes lashing him so tight he could scarcely breathe, let alone reach for his wand, even if it hadn't been removed from his possession. Barty stood over him, a look of grim satisfaction painted all over his freckled face; Pettigrew had crept to the doorway too, and was grinning with gleeful delight at his predicament. None of that, though, was what made his blood run chill in his veins.

Lord Voldemort himself stood next to Barty, statuesque and commanding. He looked even less human than the last time Severus had seen him; his nose was little more than a pair of slits, his chin and forehead angular, the very picture of a poisonous viper, except for the eyes.

The eyed were a deep red, a banked fire; and they were trained unwaveringly on Severus Snape, who was helpless and nearly breathless in the chair, body still wracked with the lingering ache of the Unforgivable curse.

"Severus," the Dark Lord crooned, "What a delightful surprise."

"My Lord," Severus said, as evenly as he could.

"Am I?" Voldemort asked, reptilian face betraying nothing. "Am I still your Lord, Severus?"

"Always," Severus said, unwavering.

"No," the Dark Lord corrected, smiling coldly. " _Not_ always, I think. Not when you thwarted my servant's efforts to obtain the Philospher's Stone, certainly."

"I did not know Quirrell was your agent," Severus said, "Not until it was too late; and for that, for my ignorance I beg your forgiveness. I sought only to prevent someone unworthy from reaching the Stone. I had no notion that he…" Severus allowed his nostrils to flare, slightly. "Forgive me, My Lord, but he did not seem… worthy… of your esteem, and so it never crossed my mind…"

"Why didn't you seek our Lord out?" Barty interrupted, licking his lips, "If you truly still serve him, why didn't you go to him, as I did, and help him return?"

Voldemort's eyes flickered briefly to his right.

"I shall ask the questions," he said, coldly, but Severus answered the question anyway.

"If I had any way of knowing that you were still out there, My Lord, I _would_ have come to you; but again I must apologise for my ignorance. I, like so many others who served you faithfully, believed the Ministry's lies, that you were truly lost to us."

"So you turned tail," Voldemort hissed, "Grovelled at Dumbledore's feet, offered to serve him, instead, as you had once served me."

Pettigrew smirked; Severus suppressed a flash of hatred that managed to flicker, even through the layers of careful lies and controlled fear in his mind.

"Yes," Severus admitted, quietly, letting his chin drop in a gesture of shame, though he kept his eyes fixed on those red ones, "It shames me to admit it, My Lord, but I did offer Dumbledore my temporary allegiance in exchange for protection from Azkaban. When I thought that you had left us; I, as many others did, told the Aurors that I had been controlled under an Imperius Curse, and… and I have teaching Potions ever since; at Hogwarts, and at Dumbledore's right hand; but now, I have returned to the one I truly wish to serve."

The Dark Lord's expression shifted into one of cold amusement. "Potions, Severus?" he asked, with an unmistakable note of derision.

"It is all I have been permitted to teach, My Lord. Dumbledore thought… he thought that allowing me to teach the Defence Against the Dark Arts would tempt me back to my old ways… and of course, he would have been correct, because the truth is that I have never left them."

He could see the indecision plain on the Dark Lord's face; the fact that he could meant that Voldemort had decided not to hide it from him; and _that_ fact might very well mean that his fate was very nearly decided, that the Dark Lord did not see the need in guarding his expression from a man soon to be dead…

The old fool trusts me," he said quickly, leaning forward painfully and earnestly against the bite of the ropes that still bound him, "He has confided his plans, his intentions in me, for the past fifteen years, believing I really was his man; and now, tonight, when I felt the pull of the Mark and wished for nothing more than to return to you, at once, I waited until he gave me the order to do so."

The Dark Lord's expression shifted, abruptly, and once once again unreadable.

"You are here on Dumbledore's orders?" he asked, softly.

"Yes," Severus said, affecting a grim satisfaction, "Or at least, that is what he thinks."

The Dark Lord's mouth spread into a thin, cold smirk. "You understand the penalty, Severus, for desertion?"

Severus' mouth was suddenly dry. "Yes," he croaked, fighting against the scent of blood, the screams of pain that swam across his memory, in the first layer of his mind, where he had deliberately arranged them. "But I have not —"

The Dark Lord cut him off, a flick of his wand effectively silencing him. His mouth worked, but no sound escaped.

"It is a harsh penalty," the Dark Lord said softly, "But a necessary one; and it occurs to me that, after thirteen years, a little reminder of the penalty may be in order, for all of my servants..."

Without his voice, Severus could not protest, could not embellish the advantages he could offer, from his position at Dumbledore's side all these years. Fear hardened into terror, pulsing wildly in the darkest, most secret corners of his mind. Outwardly, he set his face grimly, and met the Dark Lord's gaze as steadily as he could, knowing that his life would be only the beginning of the price for wavering, now.

"I cherish loyalty," the Dark Lord mused, deceptively unconcerned, "And I cherish honesty, just as fiercely, from my servants." He stepped closer, and aimed his wand. "How will I punish you, Severus, if you possess neither of them? I will kill you, certainly, for desertion, and I will make you suffer so intensely before I do that you shall beg for death's release, but…"

With his other hand, with exaggerated deliberateness, Voldemort lifted long, delicate fingers, and tapped one to his chin twice, three times. "What else can I destroy, if I discover that you have lied to me?"

 _No_. He grimly suppressed another spike of terror, forced himself not to think her name, and he locked his eyes grimly on the red ones before him.

"His daughter," Barty said, from a few steps beyond, "You could destroy her; though I suppose Bella might miss her, too."

It was a good thing that he could not speak, that the ropes held him so tightly to the chair, or he would have ripped Barty's throat out, wand or no; he would have used his fucking _teeth_ , if he had to.

The Dark Lord chuckled.

"I don't think Severus is particularly fond of your suggestion, Barty," he said, and then, coldly:

" _Legilimens!_ "

The Dark Lord's strength assaulted his barriers at once, and he heard a small sound of struggle escape his lips, as he was released from the Silencing Spell simultaneously.

This, he had been expecting; he was as prepared as he could be, or he had been, before the Dark Lord's little speech, before Barty's suggestion; and it occurred to him just in time that perhaps they had counted on rattling him.

He opened his first barrier willingly, knowing that was what the Dark Lord expected of his followers; he felt the insidious presence slithering among his thoughts, his memories, picking apart the threads of his mind with no regard whatsoever for privacy or delicacy.

He waited, behind his second barrier, monitoring the Dark Lord's progress through the busy, swirling — and carefully arranged — outer layer of his mind.

He had placed enough of his darker memories here; things he had done, things he had witnessed, as a Death Eater, when he _had_ truly served this lord; the miserable, lonely teenager he had been, and the rejection that had sent him spiraling into the Dark Lord's fold in the first place; an overwhelming sense of disgust, of despising, that he had carefully attached to the Dark Lord's enemies.

The memories of Calista that he had allowed to swirl, here, in this layer, were mundane, largely inconsequential, and he had dulled his emotional response to them as well as he could; these, he could sense the Dark Lord skipping over, utterly disinterested, and the relief of that realisation was a physical cooling blast in his gut.

Instead, the Dark Lord focused on the clusters of memory that pertained to Albus Dumbledore. He witnessed the Dark Lord poring through these, deliberately, critically; his arguments, and disagreements, to which he had attached threads of disdain and more hatred; the moments between them had seemed almost like friendship, and Severus' gloating satisfaction at having fooled the old man.

And then, he let the Dark Lord see key snippets of information, small puzzle pieces; not enough to act on, truly, but enough to prove that he _had_ them; enough to prove that he had the gift of the Headmaster's confidence and trust, that the silver-plated bargaining chip he had offered to his Master as he sat bound to this chair was not a fabrication.

Voldemort hissed softly. There was a brief respite, while Voldemort's presence still slithered through his mind, but did not act, did not seek, did not strike; and _then_ —

A sharp battering at his next barrier, and _this_ one, Severus made a convincingly valiant attempt to hold. Of course the Dark Lord knew that Severus was an Occlumens; of course he knew that no matter how loyal his servant professed to be, he would still attempt to hide some secrets from his Master.

Severus grit his teeth, holding the barrier as long as he dared; and then, when he felt Voldemort's strength begin to wane in proportion to his swiftly sharpening rage, Severus let the wall crumble down, broken apart.

"Yes," the Dark Lord crooned, "Yes, let's see what it is you hoped to hide from me… what you did not wish me to see…"

The space here was deliberately vast, deliberately full, deliberately _wild_. Here, he had hidden a maelstrom of emotion, a massive tangle of thought, a sea of images to sort through; all of them were more personal, or more private, than what he had already allowed the Dark Lord to see; and all of them were carefully selected to obfuscate the existence of yet another barrier, far beyond even this deep-seated portion of his mind.

The emotional storm reacted, reared up, at each pass of the Dark Lord's presence, each examination of a memory or thought; some, like anger, or hatred, or revulsion, the Dark Lord seemed to revel in. He revelled, too, in much of the pain, Severus' pain; he sneered at the image of Lily, at the bittersweet tangle of love and irrevocable loss.

And then, increasingly, as Voldemort drew closer to what Severus hoped the Dark Lord would perceive as his core, he encountered more of these softer emotions, feelings of protection and belonging and a family bonded by shared hurts and dark eyes. He could not exclude these memories, or his farce would be immediately detected; but he had carefully curated some, and painstakingly altered others. Still some were guarded behind the third barrier, the one the Dark Lord must not see; and precious few were bound so tightly to his core that he would take them with him, utterly unseen, if the Dark Lord did decide to punish him, after all, for desertion.

Severus suppressed a shudder, as the venomous influence touched on the memories of his daughter, but he did not have long to wallow in the discomfort; the Dark Lord hissed again, audibly, and recoiled from a flash of a memory that dripped with things that could only be described as _love_ , and where even his tender grief for Lily had not caused such intense revulsion, even the merest touch against his memories and feelings for Calista sent the Dark Lord coiling away, sent him blindly latching onto other memories.

Severus had a ready supply; he lost count of the minutes, the hours, that bled into each other, as he fed the Dark Lord all the pieces of his mind, all the threads and images and waves of emotion that made him, that made Severus Snape; as the assault wore on, he grew weary, not from resisting, but from forcing himself to relive all of the worst parts of himself, from avoiding the cluster of fierce brightness that had so revolted the Dark Lord, and that was the key to the third and final layer of his mind.

At last, the attack was done; at last, he felt the slithering withdraw of the Dark Lord, allowed his first, his weakest barrier to reform; but it was thin and weak, just as Severus now felt.

The cords were vanished, and he was pulled to unsteady feet. Severus had the bleary impression that his entire body had gone liquid while his mind had been under the unyielding assault; in that moment, the only thing in his entire being that felt solid was the third barrier in his mind, undetected and undisturbed.

"Wormtail, prepare one of the bedrooms for Severus; he will stay here, until our next full meeting. He and I have much to discuss."

 _Wormtail._ It seemed a fitting name for the putrid waste of flesh that scurried, now, to obey his Master's orders, though not without some indistinct muttering.

"You are certain he can be trusted, My Lord?" Barty ventured, from where he now leaned against the far wall, eyes watchful. "You will allow him to return, even after he was so conspicuously absent when you called?"

"Yes," the Dark Lord said, "I will allow him to return." He grasped Severus' hand, in a manner that walked the line between steadying and controlling.

"Thank you, My Lord," Severus made himself say, hating the false gratitude and the very real relief that crept into his tone, "I promise you shall not regret this."

"Of course, you must understand Severus, Barty does have a point. Your absence was noticed, earlier."

"I came as soon as I could do so without sacrificing my place, My Lord — my very valuable place — I came as soon as I could."

"Yes," the Dark Lord crooned, "I shall take that into account, of course; but surely you understand there can be no disobedience without a price? You will still help me set an example, when next my Death Eaters gather, a reminder of how unquestioningly I expect to be obeyed; but since you have not deserted me, and since you have not lied, you have my word that you will live through this punishment; you will be forgiven, when it is done, and you be restored to your position among my most valued Death Eaters; but first, you will be punished."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista leaned over the cauldron, stirring carefully, and inhaling as deeply as she could, but even the fresh, herbal smell of dittany could not clear her thoughts, or the heaviness that had invaded her so thoroughly ever since her father had gone.

It had been years, or it had been a day; her weary mind told her one thing while the clock in his study told her another.

She put out the flame and reached for an empty jar, and promptly dropped it as a now-familiar spark pressed at the back of her mind; she sucked in her breath desperately over the faint shatter of glass, and braced herself for the spear of fear, for the terrible echo of a pained scream to grip her.

It didn't, this time; instead, words came to her, faint and light, like the pinpricks of distant stars.

 _Moody_ , she heard, and then she missed a few words; she frowned, turning her concentration inward to the part of her mind that lit up, marking the anchor of their shared memory.

— _keys are here, have to break the Charms. Tell Dumbledore… he should still be alive, if…_

The words faded, flared back: _today._

 _Dad!_ She sent the desperate thread of thought towards him, through the anchor, though she knew it was likely to be futile, at whatever distance he was at, without a mirroring anchor in _his_ mind. _Dad, please tell me you are all right!_

She waited the space of a few weeks, or a few moments, and then she let her breath out, a shaky, choking sound that threatened to shift into a sob, but she would not let it.

It did not make any sense, of course; nothing she did here, save carry his messages, could make a difference where he was. And yet, still: she had resolved not to let herself cry, not to let herself give up; and every few moments, when the prospect of doing both swelled in its appeal, she told herself again to stay strong, and she kept repeating what he had said. _I promise you that I will return safely._ She had believed him, once before, and staying strong had allowed him to do just that, to save them both.

The sharp, pleasing smell of dittany drifted towards her from the cauldron, and she remembered that the brew had to be jarred and cooled immediately, or it would lose some of its potency. She used her wand to clean up the broken glass from the first jar, took a second, and filled it with the mixture, and then she capped it and set it aside, casting a Freezing Charm on the jar that she knew would hold long enough to do what it needed to.

She cleaned the cauldron, quickly, and then, squaring her shoulders, she made herself walk up the stairs, out of her father's basement workroom, and — for the first time since he'd left her here — out of her father's quarters, into the corridor beyond.

Mercifully, she didn't run into many students on her way, and even though the few that she did pass recognised her with a bewildered look, she pressed on, mouth set grimly, until she reached the stone gargoyle on the third floor.

"Fizzing Whizbee," she said, and as soon as the gargoyle shifted, she raced up the spiral staircase; she lifted her fist, ready to knock heavily, when the door suddenly swung open.

The Headmaster's gaze was solemn, questioning, as he ushered her silently into his office.

"Do you have a message for me, Calista?" Professor Dumbledore asked, as the door closed quietly behind them.

"Yes," she said, meeting his gaze; it was calm, if still solemn, and inquisitive, and —

"How can you let him do this?" she burst out, aggrieved, "He's — they're hurting him, and… and…"

She expected to be interrupted, but the Headmaster merely waited, politely, for her to finish her thought.

"It's enough," she finished lamely, tightening her throat against the burn of tears that she would not shed, "It's — he needs to come back."

The Headmaster's gaze was unchanging. "This is your father's message?"

Calista felt the burn in her throat turn into something much fiercer; her eyes narrowed, and her fingers twitched,

" _No_ ," she growled, "It's _mine_."

And then: "You don't even care, do you? You don't care if he —" No, those words could not come out, any more than her tears could. Another flickering spark, in the back of her mind; a flicker of fear, but at least — mercifully — not pain, this time. Her throat worked, her gut heaved.

"Moody's in his trunk," she spat out suddenly, "Crouch still has the keys. You'll have to break the Charms. It should be today."

The Headmaster was quite still for a moment, and Calista wondered if he had heard her. When she looked up at him again, his brilliant blue eyes were fixed on her, not quite searching, but assessing.

At last, he brushed by her, wordlessly, periwinkle robes swishing, and she wondered wildly if he meant to leave her here; her glance darted, briefly, to the fireplace, as another flicker of fear burned at her mind, but she didn't even know where to go, and she had _promised_.

"Calista," the Headmaster said, quietly, from behind her, "Come with me. Time is short, and we may need you."

Swallowing her emotions and another burning threat of tears, Calista followed the Headmaster, as they left his study. She followed him to Professor Flitwick's quarters, where he tersely explained the situation, and then she followed both of them to the Defence professor's office.

It had changed, since she had been here the year before; where the shelves and corners had held dusty books and the occasional odd creature, there were now Dark Detectors and Sneakoscopes; she even saw a Foe-Glass, shadowy shapes lurking distantly within it.

Dumbledore spell-locked the office door with a series of intricate charms, and then he and Flitwick approached the large, hulking trunk that sat next to Moody's desk.

It had seven formidable-looking locks on it, and Dumbledore tapped his wand to the first one, but he did not use an Unlocking Charm, as Calista expected. Instead, he muttered a Detection Spell.

"As I suspected," he said, turning to Flitwick, "These locks are embedded with powerful offensive Charms, which will triggered by an Unlocking Spell; we will need to break them before we can open it."

Flitwick frowned. "I suppose it would be too much to hope that the charms are connected," he mused, "That there is only one layer to break?"

"Yes, Filius, I'm afraid that would be too much to hope for; it seems that each of the seven locks is embedded with a separate combination of spells. I fear that this will not be quick, and yet, we may have precious little time."

Flitwick tapped his own wand to each of the locks, in turn; he muttered a complicated series of detection and searching spells; a few times, he shook his head and began again. Another flicker of fear licked at Calista's mind, gripping her gut.

"The spells need to be broken in order," Flitwick said, at last, "It is indeed a complex arrangement; it will take time, but perhaps a bit less if we tackle it together."

Dumbledore nodded, as if he had more or less expected this; and then, he turned, and Calista found herself the subject of his intense gaze again.

"Will you assist us, Calista?"

She blinked. "What?"

"The spells embedded to these locks all appear to be charms; the more skilled wands we can turn to them, the quicker we can find Alastor, and, I hope, the better chance we have of saving him before he perishes of thirst. It would be foolish, with time so critical, to overlook an apprentice of the Experimental Charms Committee so readily at our disposal; so I ask you again, Calista, will you assist us?"

She was still gripped, every few minutes or every few hours, by agnosing, unwelcome flickers from the anchor point in her mind; she was low on sleep, she was due to reapply the essence of dittany; and beyond all of that, she was still terrified of Moody, imposter or no; a shiver gripped her, as her gaze slid between the Headmaster's and Professor Flitwick.

"Yes," she said, stepping forward, and gripping the reassuring pine of her wand as she moved to stand with them, "I'll help break the charms."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista's fingers shook when they dipped into the little jar, scooping a healthy glob of the dittany she'd brewed earlier — had that really been only earlier _today_?

She was glad for the relative dark in her room, eased only by the witchfire nightlight at the other end, when she stripped most of her clothes off, and began applying the salve.

The scars were pink and shiny against her pale skin; and perhaps it was her imagination, or perhaps it was because she had missed at least three doses today, but she thought they looked angrier, uglier than they had earlier this morning.

Her shoulders already ached, from hours hunched over that enchanted chest, untangling the sinister charms and complicated locking spells with the Headmaster and Professor Flitwick; but she'd been calling him Filius by the end of it, as they worked fervently together and with Dumbledore, against the flow of time. It had been exhausting, complicated work, and when they had finally cracked the last lock, had finally revealed the deep, grave-like chamber where the real Moody lay unconscious and ragged, she had been sweating and sagging and practically numb with effort, and she had not been the only one.

If they had ached, since then, her shoulders burned now, as she bent low and far enough to reach the scars that crossed her hips, her thighs. It took more than she'd realised it was going to, to coat the scars, though it wasn't the first time she'd done so. She would have to make more of the salve, probably; but _could she?_ She was so thoroughly drained that it took her fifteen minutes to find the energy to simply pull a clean nightdress over her head; and when she looked at her blankets, tucked neatly and firmly into the corners of her mattress by unseen house-elves, she knew that she could not expel the effort even to peel them back, with her hands or with her wand.

She dropped onto her bed, above the bedclothes, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, with her wand still clenched in her fist, and her mind utterly silent, for once.

It was hours later that she awoke; she sat up, gripped by apprehension, as she realised that something in the distance was grasping at her attention.

 _Dad_ , she thought, automatically, but no; the anchor point was silent. It was something on the _outside_ , an insistent, faraway pounding…

She leapt out of bed, faintly surprised to find her fingers already wrapped around her wand. She lifted it in front of her, and cautiously advanced down the main corridor of her father's quarters, eyes fixed on the door at the end, where the pounding seemed to be coming from, or beyond.

"We know you're in there," a female voice said, as the pounding paused; but it was a _young_ female voice, and one that she thought she knew. Calista opened the door, stepping into her father's office, and the pounding immediately rose in volume.

"Open the door," came a different, but equally familiar voice, "Before _we_ do it with a Blasting Curse."

"Eva, stop, it's still a professor's door, we can't —"

Calista fumbled with the lock, and then wrenched open the door; there was a brief moment of shocked peace, before she was fiercely and firmly held in place, by three very insistent sets of squeezing arms.

" _Calista!_ " Sofia Lima squealed, the highest set of arms, her voice unnervingly close to Calista's unprotected ear, "It _is_ you, you're here!"

Daisy Spratt and Eva Selwyn's mouths opened, too, and then Calista was hopelessly lost in rising chatter, and still utterly unable to move.

She protested, and tried several times to extricate herself, but somehow, she ended up being propelled down the corridor by the three of them; they had to let go of her waist to walk, but that didn't stop Eva from gripping her wrist, seemingly heedless of her wand, or Daisy from slipping her hand into Calista's free one, and gripping it tightly.

"Wait," Calista heard herself say, "I can't, I have to —" Well, she couldn't very well tell them that she'd planned to stand sentry, all day, in her father's study; couldn't admit that she had planned on watching each agonising second tick by, as she listened for the wretched _flicker_ in her mind.

"You have to come with us," Sofia said, thrusting out her chest with the shiny Prefect's badge, "We all agreed, as soon as Tabitha said she saw you in corridor yesterday, that we would find you, and that we wouldn't take no for an answer."

"I — I —"

She paused; there hadn't been a flicker, in several hours, or if there had, it had been too weak to pierce her sleep, as the others had repeatedly done, the first night. She did not know if that was a good sign or a bad one; she did not know anything, except that she had countless hours to tick by today, remembering the dittany when she could, and — oh, _Merlin._

"I'm in my nightdress," she hissed, suddenly mortified, and yanked her wrist free; her hand took more effort. She yanked, but Daisy held fast.

"That's okay," Daisy said, "I can fix that — hold still. Eva, help me hold her her again."

"What — what are you doing?"

Eva took up her other wrist again, and Sofia leapt forward to take the wrist above Daisy's hand.

"Go on then, Daisy," Sofia said, "Quickly, before she bites one of us."

Calista snarled, yanking both of her arms free, just as Daisy performed a complicated little motion with her wand, and suddenly, Calista was wearing white trousers and a top in the same fabric of her old nightdress.

"I still haven't figured out changing the material," Daisy said, apologetically, "Or the colours. But look, you're not in your nightdress anymore."

Somehow, utterly against every single one of her intentions, Calista found herself being dragged along, again; her friends tugged her stubbornly up staircase after staircase, until they ended up in a very familiar seventh-floor corridor. The girls paced, at least one of them keeping a grip on Calista until the door behind the tapestry was revealed, and they hurried her unceremoniously inside.

The room was nothing like Calista had ever seen it; it was bright, with patterned wallpaper and thick, purple carpet, and strewn with an assortment of pouffy, brightly-coloured chairs. There was also — thank Merlin — a bookshelf, though a preliminary glance revealed more sacks of dungbombs than books, and Sofia managed to procure an assortment of snacks from a cupboard set into the far wall.

"I already told the room we needed _at least_ four hours to catch up," Daisy said, smiling innocently when Calista's eyes slid towards the door, "It won't let us out unless there's an emergency; so you might as well take the green chair, before Eva does. It's the most comfortable."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

For three days, the little knot of memory where her father had anchored herself was clear and calm, though she could still feel it there, humming; could still sense the connection, however distant, even though nothing came along it.

She visited wither her friends again, realising that she probably needed the distraction, that listening to their chatter and gossip made the days pass much quicker than watching the clock did; and she visited with Professor Flitwick again, too — no, Filius. Somehow, now that they had gone through the aching, harrowing ordeal with the Charmed locks together, he felt more familiar than he had before; and perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed that he spoke to her differently, now, too; almost as if she really _were_ a member of the Hogwarts staff, filling in on stocking the hospital wing while her father was away, which was the feeble-feeling lie she'd fed to her boss Astra, at St. Mungo's.

She had three owls from Gerald, during those first few days, all of them variations on the same message: _I'm worried about you; I miss you; please call me._

She wanted to, she'd realised, opening the first one; if Daisy's clever transfigurations and Eva's exploits and Sofia's laughter had been a sorely needed distraction, then how many similarly necessary distractions could she find with _him_ , in his clever phrases and soft words, his gentle hands and pleasing mouth? But she could not forget what her father had said, before he'd gone:

_You must stay guarded about what you are doing here, even from him. If you cannot, we will have no choice but to modify his memory._

How could she risk that consequence, when she knew it was what he feared most? She had no doubt that she _could_ hide her purpose from him, but she was equally as certain that she wouldn't want to; that once she saw him, once his fingers brushed her ear and his arms wrapped securely around her, she would _want_ to tell him everything, to hear him murmur a reassurance that Severus would be okay, that everything would; and she did not think she could bear that ache of loneliness, of not being able to confide in him, on top of everything else, and so she had to content herself with a brief reply by owl, on the fourth day:

_Gerald,_

_I miss you, too. I'm sorry that I can't call, but I have too much here to do. I'm keeping the hospital wing stocked with potions, and it's more work than I anticipated._

_You don't need to worry about me. I'm fine, if slightly exhausted._

_Te amo, mea dulcis noctua._

_Calista_

On the fifth day, another insistent knock woke her from sleep, but this one was far more nerve-wracking, and far less welcome than the one from her friends; it was the Headmaster, inviting her to accompany him to the hospital wing, to meet the man she had helped save; the one she had thought she'd met, thought she'd dueled.

It was unsettling, and she immediately wondered why she'd agreed to go. The encounter as a strange sort of role reversal, from her first meeting with the imposter. This time it was she who stood wary watch, and Moody who was lying nearly helpless on a crisp white bed.

He looked quite different, with his shrunken frame, hair even more unkempt than she'd ever see it, missing his wooden leg and his magical eye; and still, even without it, his gaze felt uncomfortably penetrating.

"Calista Snape," Moody said, gruffly, after a moment had passed; once he had made the introductions, Dumbledore had retreated to the edge of the room, and though he looked unconcerned, Calista had no doubt that he was watching, listening. She wasn't certain if that reassured her or frightened her. "I'm told I owe you some manner of thanks."

"That's not necessary."

Moody grunted. "Not necessary? Albus told me how you helped, with the locks on my trunk." His voice was the same, but the tone just slightly, almost imperceptibly different from the one she'd heard. It lacked the eerie familiarity that had somehow triggered her dreams to remember Crouch.

"Must have been damn fine Charmwork," Moody continued, "Since I see you still have both of your eyes, which is more than I can say for myself, eh?"

Calista suppressed a shiver, finding the man himself far more unsettling than the empty socket; he might not be a Death Eater, after all, but he was still the man she'd always been afraid of; still the ruthless Auror that would have undoubtedly tortured her and tossed her in Azkaban along with her mother, if he'd ever found her.

"Professor Dumbledore and F — Professor Flitwick asked me to help," she said, far more coolly than she felt, "So I did."

He nodded, sending locks of grizzled grey hair leaping around the pillow. "So you did," he agreed, and then his one good eye seemed to bore into hers. "Something else you did, from what I hear. Seems you were the first one to realise I'd been replaced by an imposter. Since to my recollection, we've never met, that's pretty damn impressive."

"I'd met _him_ ," Calista said, drawing her shoulders up, knowing the condemnation for that fact was coming; and while she was at it, she might as well face the rest of what still weighed on her, from that night; what made her think, bitterly, that perhaps she deserved the still-pink scars across her torso. "And I didn't realise it soon enough, obviously."

_He still came back._

She hadn't said it, but Moody seemed to know exactly what she'd meant, anyway.

"Voldemort was coming back, one way or another," he told her quietly, "Some of us have always known; some of us have been watching the signs. Maybe if you'd seen that guttersnipe for what he was sooner, it would have happened a different way. Still would have happened."

"Perhaps a different tragedy was prevented," Calista nearly started, as the Headmaster's voice rumbled from behind her, "Your discovery led us to stop the Tournament, even if it did not stop Lord Voldemort's return. We will never know what might have passed, what might have gone differently; and so it does not do to dwell on things that cannot be changed."

"There's where we disagree, Albus," Moody said, "I say it does damn well to dwell, as long as it helps you prepare for the next time. I reckon none of us will be fooled by Polyjuice Potion again, eh?"

"I certainly hope not," the Headmaster said, mildly.

Moody drifted off to sleep shortly after that; it was unnerving, to say the least, since he kept his one good eye open, and he seemed to twitch whenever anyone in the room moved.

She had the strange impression, when Dumbledore courteously insisted on walking with her back to her father's quarters, that she had just been, perhaps even was still being, assessed; but for what? If they didn't realise by now that she wasn't her mother's daughter, then they never would.

She checked the spell-locks on the door twice, before letting herself wearily in, and reaching for the jar of dittany.

She pretended not to notice that the scars still were not fading.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The sixth day was unbearable.

She was brewing the dittany again, a concentrated batch this time, since the shiny pink lines still looked more or less the same as they had the day after the duel, when the anchor point began to flicker; she waited for it to pass, and ruined the potion three separate times when it didn't; instead, the flicker became a steady stream of anxiety, a rising tide of apprehension, and even though it had a small, tight origin in her mind, she could not stop it from overtaking _all_ of her; or perhaps, for some perverse reason, she didn't _want_ to stop it.

As night fell, she abandoned all pretense of brewing anything, of doing anything but keeping watch. The anxiety inside her mind crested into terror, and _then_ —

Pain; unbearable, unyielding, unending pain. She could not feel it herself, though she could hear the echoing scream, clouding that corner and every corner of her mind, but she did not need to; she had felt it before, she knew what it was to have nerves ablaze, skin twisting, muscles screaming, bone bending, breaking but still somehow whole.

Her body felt soft and weak, her own nerves utterly shot; she gripped the back of one of her father's armchairs until her nails dug into the upholstery, until her knuckles were white and aching and locked in place, and she stared at the hateful clock, watched each second jerk harshly into the next; on and on, until, surely, a hundred years had passed.

Finally, silence. Stillness. She exhaled, choking on fire.

Another flicker, in the back of her mind, before she could even catch a single breath. She braced herself for another silent scream, but there was just one word, urgent and commanding:

_Stay._

He was undoubtedly alive. That was the only comfort she could claim, as she looked down with detachment at her own tired hands, half-expecting them to be gnarled and twisted with age.

They were not. They were merely white and trembling, and it took her three tries to detach them from the chair.

She stumbled the few steps it took her to end up on the other side of it, collapsed into the chair, little more than a shaking, breathless tangle of arms and legs and shiny, pink scars.

The hateful clock; she watched it, through the eerie, unbroken silence, awaiting another wave, another howl, another scream. She waited, until the clock had circled itself entirely, letting her insides fill with tears, but not allowing a single one to fall; not allowing a single, shaking breath to choke its way into a sob, because she had promised to stay strong, and to wait, and perhaps the not-crying was mad, but it had gotten them this far.

And then, finally, when she could not bear a single second more of the clock, of the waiting, of the useless trembling of her hands, she heard the door at the head of the corridor opening; she found her feet and almost lost them again immediately, and she stumbled into the arms of the the man she'd been standing sentry for, digging her nails as fiercely into his as she had done to his chair; pretending not to notice his haunted, grey face just as she had pretended not to notice her scars.

"Dad," she gasped, and then there was nothing she could do to prevent the relentless, burning flood of tears. "You — you came back."

His fingers clutched her shoulders just as desperately as she clung to him, and when his weight sagged against her, Calista realised that even her tired, trembling limbs were steady enough, when they needed to be, to hold him up.

"My — my strong, clever daughter," Severus croaked hoarsely, "I did promise."


	2. Leverage

For hours after Severus returned from the Dark Lord, he sat, grim-faced and trembling in his favourite armchair; and in yet another role reversal, Calista was the one stayed with him through the nightmares, a protective shadow offering comfort when he would accept it, and companionable silence when he would not.

He did not go to his room to sleep, though he was surely in sore need of it, and Calista refused to go to hers; when he snatched bits of fitful sleep in his chair, Calista tried to do the same, but found that she could not quite bring herself to close her eyes to him, because she didn't think she could bear it if he were not there when she opened them.

When he dreamt, during those brief moments of restless sleep, Calista could feel his alarm, urgent and pressing in her mind, and she ached helplessly, knowing all too well what it felt like, but also knowing that he had to sleep, if he could.

She had breakfast sent up in the morning, and when she couldn't rouse him from his chair for that, she had lunch sent up a few hours later, and finally managed to coax him to the kitchen. Her stomach felt too tense to handle either meal, so she sipped on coffee, instead, until she'd had so much that it began to feel sour and raw in her gut.

"I'm glad we're going home tomorrow," Calista finally ventured, after her father had finished eating, but had not risen from the table. When he merely frowned, Calista continued, "We _are_ going home tomorrow, right?"

It was the last day of term, and Calista had already missed an entire week of work. If not for the fact that it was now technically her uncle paying her salary, she was nearly certain she wouldn't have had one to go back to.

"We will be leaving Hogwarts tomorrow," her father said, "I plan on returning home."

Before she even had a chance to properly register her relief, his eyes flickered up to her face, a question visible on his features.

"How would you feel about your staying somewhere else, for a few days? Your Aunt Andromeda's home, perhaps, or B — Gerald's?"

Calista blinked. "It's… it's still not safe to go back home?"

He hedged.

"I really don't want to stay with anyone else," she said, but she could tell by the sudden shifting of the lines in his face that he had decided something. She felt her heart sink, knowing it was going to something she wouldn't like.

"I don't believe our home will be unsafe for me," Severus finally said, quietly, "But I do fear that I may have certain — visitors — over the next few days that I would rather not subject you to."

"I already know about Mrs. Yaxley," she reminded him, with a deliberate light dryness, but it did nothing for the brittle mood in the little kitchen.

"There is nothing amusing about any of this," her father said, in a soft sort of voice that made her gut suddenly heave. She instantly regretted her sixth cup of coffee.

"I'm sorry," she said, around the sour feeling in her mouth, "I just — I suppose I was just trying to say something, _anything_ that might trick me into thinking things are normal, just for a moment."

"They're not," Severus said shortly, and then: "I suppose, after everything you must have sensed, you deserve the truth. Crouch mentioned you to the Dark Lord while I was with them. I do not know what might have been said before I arrived."

Her heart hammered, and she could feel the sour crawl of the coffee working its way up her throat.

"I do not think the Dark Lord has decided, yet, that you are interesting. I would very much prefer that he never does; keeping you utterly out of sight from anyone _else_ that might think to mention you to him seems sound, at the moment."

"What about…" Calista swallowed a sour lump that felt suspiciously like vomit, "What about Uncle Lucius? Is he… did he…?"

"He knows that it is my utmost intention to keep you away from the Dark Lord and his followers," her father said, which told her enough, non-answer that it was, "Nevertheless, I would feel more comfortable, at the moment, if you were not to visit the manor."

It was an utter departure from everything she knew. When she could not be with him, he had always, _always_ preferred that she was with her aunt and uncle. That, it seemed, was no longer the case.

It struck her that Draco, barely fifteen-year-old and highly impressionable _Draco_ , was still going home on the train tomorrow, was still going to the very same manor that her father did not want _her_ to go to, lest she encounter another of the Dark Lord's servants there, and suddenly, she could no longer hold onto the contents of her stomach.

"Excuse me," she managed to mumble, fumbling out of her chair with enough clumsiness and force to send it toppling noisily to the floor behind her; she just made it to the tiny bathroom, where she promptly expelled all six cups of coffee.

It was a long time before she could bring herself to leave the bathroom; it seemed to her that once she did, she would have to face it all again: the newly-grey sallowness of her father's face; her recollection of Potter's blanched and bloodstained skin as he told them all _He's back_ ; the shadowed, haunting memories of _before_ that were fighting to surface in her mind, that were suddenly almost indistinguishable from _now_.

When she finally returned to the kitchen, her father was on his feet, not quite as grey and not quite as grim as she had left him. He had changed into a fresh set of robes.

"I am expected to make an appearance at the end of term feast shortly," he said, "You are welcome to attend, but you don't have to."

"They're still having the feast?" It seemed utterly absurd; but then, in her current state, _everything_ did. Food; work; sunlight. They all suddenly seemed like things that belonged to a different world entirely.

"Yes. And the Headmaster has decided to inform the students of the Dark Lord's return; how many will believe him, when the Ministry is dead set on ignoring the facts, remains to be seen."

Her heart picked up speed, hammering against a chest that felt hollow, and still somehow sour.

"It's not a nightmare," she murmured, jaw aching as the words rolled around in her mouth, "It's really happening, isn't it?"

"Yes, Calista," her father said, heavily, "It is really happening."

He gave her a familiar, assessing look, and Calista was too tired to erect her mask of _I'm fine_ ; she knew he would see what she had glimpsed in the bathroom mirror a few moments ago, waxy skin and shadowed eyes, and perhaps, the edge of still-pink scars at her collar.

"Go to Boot's tomorrow," he said, making the choice for her, and they both pretended not to notice the small crack in his voice, "You might as well tell him what the Headmaster is going to tell everyone, anyway. You might as well tell him the truth."

"All of it?" How _could_ she? How could she possibly explain the agony of a week of waiting, of watching the clock, of having her heart torn out through the back of her mind?

"I suppose that depends," Severus said, at length, "On how far he's progressed, during your Occlumency lessons."

She was silent. She recalled what he had said, almost half a year ago, on the subject.

_I stand by my decision to teach that boy Occlumency, if you will not. He is too close to you, I think, for us to neglect it much longer._

She had done worse than neglect it; she had refused, coldly, each time Gerald brought it up, until he'd finally ceased asking. She had increasingly employed her superior skill in the art against him, deflecting his insistence that something was wrong, and going through the motions of affection with a calculated detachment and just enough manufactured warmth to keep him from pressing her, from thoroughly understanding that he was right, that whatever she was could not possibly be described as _fine_.

"You have not been instructing him, despite my warning," Severus observed, and suddenly his disapproval was a third entity in the quiet corridor, staring her down.

She recalled Gerald's letters, the ache of how badly she'd _wanted_ to summon him to the castle during the past wretched week, to let herself feel true warmth from him, without the interference of the chill she'd drawn around herself, these past six months, a cloak of distance; and she recalled the choice she'd made, in response to that desire.

"What if I don't want to tell him?" Calista asked, quietly. "What if I think it's better for him if he doesn't know?"

She expected a careful, measured response, or perhaps none at all; but instead, her father was looking at her as if she had blown up a cauldron; a nerve in his cheek twitched ominously.

"The Dark Lord is returned," he said, quite tersely, "It does no one any good to be ignorant to that fact."

An uncomfortable rush of shame flooded her face, and she covered it with a scowl.

"I didn't mean that part," she snapped, "I meant — I meant —" she floundered; what _did_ she mean, exactly?

"It's all real," she finally said, "And… and if he — if the Dark Lord — does decide that I'm _interesting_ ," her mouth twisted savagely around the word, "I don't want Gerald to be in danger because of me."

"The Dark Lord is returned," her father said again, just as tersely as he had before, " _Everyone_ is in danger."

Her stomach leapt again, and she was suddenly grateful that there was no longer anything in it.

"You know what I mean," she said, quietly.

Several expressions crossed her father's face in quick succession, none of which she dared to interpret.

"Yes, I do. And that is why I told you, months ago, to teach him, or to let me do it; now, since you have done neither, it will very soon be too late."

"Fine," Calista agreed quietly, bones aching under the weight of his gaze, "Then it's too late."

A familiar feeling settled in her gut; a wretched, twisted sort of self-righteousness; and she knew suddenly and utterly precisely what she was saying, what she had been edging towards, these last six months or more. The sharp, acrid burn crawled from her throat down into her heart, where it settled as a tiring, heavy ache.

"I wonder," her father asked, devastatingly soft, "Do you understand what you must do, if you can't or won't teach him — if it is indeed _'too late'_?"

"Yes; I have to stop telling him anything." Her throat tightened painfully. "I suppose it would be wisest not to talk to him at all, anymore."

"Yes, all of that would undoubtedly be wise; _after_ you've modified his memory, of course."

"After I've done _what?!_ " The words practically scraped out of her abused throat; but her father's steady stare, the grim set of his features, were utterly merciless.

"You want to protect him, yes?"

"Of course I do."

"Then teach him how to maintain control of his mind," her father snarled, "So that it does not _break_ in the event that the Dark Lord thinks to use him to bait you — such leverage is the only thing the Dark Lord understands about love, but he understands it devastatingly well."

Calista's mouth was dry, and her legs were beginning to fill with the same bitter ache that had thus far gripped her throat and her chest; she braced herself against the doorframe of the study, in case they decided to give out, after all.

"You just said — you said he doesn't want — you said I'm not 'interesting' yet…"

Her father's mouth twisted almost inhumanly before he replied. "Neither is Boot; but you do not need to be interesting to be used as bait; it would be foolish for us not to consider that the Dark Lord may eventually realise — if he doesn't already — that _you_ can be used to bait _me_ ; and if that does happen, the whole chain will crumble the moment that Boot does."

Her eyes blurred painfully, and now it seemed that every single part of her was burning with bile, or something like it. "I _know_ that," she forced the words out, hating the way they trembled, the sound of unshed tears in her voice, "And that's why I'm trying — I want to keep him _out_ of the chain, don't you see? And you're saying it's too late, that I can't — but if that's the case, then how is modifying his memory going to help him?"

"It isn't. It would only ensure that he is a fruitless link for the Dark Lord to break; but it would not stop him from being broken."

"Why are you telling me this, now?" she whispered, hopelessly, "Now that it's too late?"

There was a blur of darkness that she interpreted to be a movement; it was confirmed a moment later, when her father's hand settled on her shoulder, a reassuring feeling utterly at odds with the tone of his voice, the poison of his words.

"If you recall," her father said, very quietly, "It was you who declared that it was already too late; I only told you that it _would_ be, very soon; and perhaps my words seem harsh, but I need to be certain that you understand the urgency behind them."

She had to allow several moments for the burn in her eyes to fade, for her vision and her throat to clear sufficiently.

"I understand the urgency," she finally said, with grim resolve, "I understand exactly what I need to do."

"Calista…"

She heard the hitch of hesitation in her father's voice; she sensed an inkling of concern, but she did not want it, in that moment; if she were to keep her resolve, then his urgency was the only thing she was interested in.

"You're going to be late to the feast," she said, evenly, and she extracted her shoulder from his grip. "And I'd better call Gerald to let him know I'm coming."

He glanced at the wall clock, and then back at her. His mouth creased into a frown, but she was right; the feast was going to begin any moment.

"I'll return as quickly as I can," her father said, "We'll remove the anchor point — it will be good practise, for you — and we'll talk."

Calista nodded agreeably, knowing full well that she was only agreeing to the first part of his offer; it was exactly as she'd already told him. She understood what she had to do; there was no need to talk any further.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

" _Mon cœur,_ I'm so relieved to see you — you won't believe what I heard this morning; and I was so worried, even though —"

Gerald interrupted his embrace and his rush of words simultaneously, as Calista responded woodenly to both. His arms shifted up to her shoulders, brows coming down in concern.

"You're _not_ all right," he murmured, and Calista immediately felt the awful, burning sensation from the night before creeping back into her gut. "I should have known you were lying again, I _felt_ —"

"I'm fine." At the last minute, Calista reined her snarl and her scowl back, making her face and her voice as carefully neutral as possible. It wasn't his fault, what she had to do; and she suspected that what she would eventually have to tell him would hurt him, enough. There was no need to add to his misery.

Gerald lifted his hand from her shoulder, bringing it towards her face in a soft, familiar motion he had done hundreds of times; and she flinched, in the instant before his skin touched hers. He frowned, the pad of his thumb poised over her cheekbone, and the ache inside her intensified at the realisation that he'd been intending to wipe away a tear that she hadn't even realised she had shed.

"Please don't," she whispered, and she lifted her own hand, fingers carefully unhooking his other hand from her shoulder. She stepped back, until she felt the knob of his front door against the small of her back, and _that_ made her flinch, too, though she tried to hide it with a deliberate stumble.

"You're not," Gerald said, quietly, though he did not try to touch her again; did not try to close the physical distance between them. "I'm not certain if I've ever seen you _less_ 'fine' in all the time I've known you, except perhaps…" She saw his pulse jump, briefly, in his throat. "After the trial..."

_After the trial._ The reminder of one of the reasons she was here, one of the potentially dangerous secrets he held, was enough for her to cling to, to pull herself up, at least mentally; she found that while she did not quite have enough resolve to step closer to him, or to straighten her shoulders, she _did_ have enough to draw a careful mask of near-blankness across her face. She allowed a small fraction of her exhaustion to show through, so that he might guess that was the reason for the rest of it.

"I'm knackered," she said, quietly, but _that_ made him step closer, again. She shook her head, very slightly, until he stepped back again, and then she shifted her gaze slightly to his left. She didn't want to meet his; didn't want to acknowledge the warmth, the caring concern; least of all, the flicker of uncertain fear, that told her perhaps he already _knew_ why she didn't want to be close to him —

"I went to pick Terry up from the train this morning," Gerald said, quietly and grimly into the space between them, "You're not going to believe what he told me; _I_ can't believe it; and yet, he wasn't deliberately lying, I'm certain he wasn't."

"What did Terry tell you?" Calista asked neutrally, eyes still fixed on the bookshelves behind him.

"He told me — he said that Professor Dumbledore told the students at the feast last night that — that —"

Gerald's breath hitched audibly, and she could see his shoulders stiffen, while he forced himself to go on.

"He said that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned," he finished, quietly; and again, as if he simply could not help himself, he stepped towards her. She side-stepped him neatly, but even the faint brush of his fingers against her shoulder made her ache for things she could not accept, could not encourage.

"It's true," Calista said, softly, and now she had to make herself look at him; it wasn't the sort of news that seemed all right to give, otherwise. "He's —" she swallowed the threatening burn in her throat, "He's back."

She saw Gerald shiver; saw the uncertainty in his eyes fade, and the fear increase.

"That's right; you were at Hogwarts. You must have heard the speech, too."

"No, I didn't. I —" She frowned. Would he be cross, if she admitted she'd been on the fire with _him_ , while that speech was being given? Would he demand to know why she hadn't told him, then, and would he believe her if she told him that she had wanted _just one more_ conversation with him, before any of what she'd come here to tell him had built an impenetrable wall between them?

"I already knew," she told him; after all, _this_ was the one part she'd been sanctioned to tell him, and perhaps even a partial truth would be a cooling salve against the incessant, sour ache in her mouth. "I knew it the night that I went to Hogwarts, to tell my father about — to tell him what I'd remembered."

"You knew that He-Who —" Gerald's brow furrowed, "You knew he was back, a _week_ ago, on the night of the third task?" His voice cracked, and rose. "You — you knew when I called you, when I felt —"

"No," she interrupted fiercely, because she couldn't stand the way he was looking at her now, "I didn't know _then_. All I knew _then_ was that I'd remembered who Moody reminded me of, and —"

She stopped, realising that he probably didn't even know that Moody had been an imposter, even though she had always been permitted to tell him this part. She hadn't told him anything at all, other than that she was _fine._ The burn of that constant lie, and the weight of everything that was still untold were both suddenly unbearable.

"I'm sorry, I can't — do you have any coffee, or — anything, I just can't —"

Her fingers were aching for the curved warmth of a mug, but the source of warmth he offered her was quite different; his hands took hers up before she could protest, and even that small contact was so heartbreakingly _normal_ after the week she'd had that she could no longer bring herself to summon the resolve to resist.

"Your hands are freezing," Gerald said in a quietly scolding tone, as if it were something she could help; and but it seemed to her, then that it wasn't _just_ her hands. She suppressed a shiver while he led her, rather more firmly than she'd expected, into his kitchen. He shifted one hand to her shoulder again, then, and this time she did not flinch; she let him push her gently into a wooden chair.

"I didn't know, when you called me, that the D — that You-Know-Who was coming back," she said to his back, while he removed something from fridge and muttered a warming spell. "I just — I had the dream again, the one I told you about, and there was another part to it that time, something I had to tell my father about. I found out when I got to Hogwarts, that night."

He didn't respond, at least not right away. She caught a whiff of something that was a little bit like coffee, if it had been left out for a month, and perhaps trampled by a herd of thestrals for good measure. After a few moments, he finally turned; she didn't want to interpret the look in his eyes, so she looked at the plate and mug he set in front of her, instead.

The plate contained some sort of casserole, and even after being reheated, it smelled unbelievably appetising; still, her stomach rolled in protest. The mug of dark not-coffee that he'd set beside it only sharpened the ache.

"What happened that night?" Gerald asked quietly, and she realised that he hadn't retreated, after offering her the reheated food and whatever was in the mug. His body effectively blocked her only exit avenue, unless she planned on climbing onto the table and leaping over the half-wall into his living room.

"They… they cancelled the tournament, partway through the last task," Calista said. She took a bite of the casserole, for the sole purpose of her buying herself a few more seconds to decide how to answer, how much to tell him, but the morsel stuck in her throat, prompting her to reach for the steaming mug; she took a long draw of the liquid, and felt her nose wrinkle at the same moment that the bit of casserole dropped into her stomach like a stone. "Erm — is this supposed to be coffee, or mud?"

"It's instant," Gerald said, and he leaned closer, settling his fingers on her shoulder again. "Calista, what happened to _you_ that night?"

"Nothing," she said; it was the familiar warmth of his hand, pressing against her shoulder, that decided her. It would be easier, this way; if he did not know about any of the horrors of the past week, then he would not feel the need to comfort her, and she would not need to convince herself all over again to do what she'd already decided to do.

"Nothing?" Gerald echoed, and she nodded, meeting his gaze even though she didn't want to, selling the lie with her face as much as with her words.

"I see," he finally said, and, mercifully, his fingers lifted from her shoulder. He started to turn away, and Calista exhaled, and wrapped her fingers around the mug; it might not taste like coffee, but it still _felt_ the right way, in her hands.

"I suppose," Gerald said, turning back to her, and his voice cracked, again. "That 'nothing' happened the day _after_ that, either?"

She blinked. "I… suppose so. I don't remember anything from that day."

_Nothing besides hearing my father scream, inside my head_ , she added silently, _And spending the better part of the day freeing the real Mad-Eye from his own trunk._

"And it was 'nothing' again, the day before yesterday, was it?"

"What are you talking about?" she snarled, and suddenly it was as if the floor beneath her was opening up; _the day before yesterday_ ; but no, that awful day of horror and waiting and pain had been longer ago than that, hadn't it?

"I _felt_ you," Gerald said, and his words seemed to shiver with feeling, "Or I heard you — or I don't know _what_ exactly to call it, but I _knew_ something awful was happening — I knew you were afraid, or hurt or — or —" He shuddered, and made a small sound; then he sucked in a breath, and that seemed to steady him slightly. "Calista, tell me the truth. Please."

"Fuck," she whispered, without quite meaning to say it aloud, and then: " _Fuck._ It's — Merlin's blood, what the hell is wrong with me, why didn't I ever realise — the anchor point, Gerald."

It was his turn to blink, puzzled. "What?"

Why hadn't she realised before? It wasn't the first time he'd said something similar, but —

_But before, I didn't know what it felt like_ , she realised, _To have an anchor point in your mind, from someone you actually care about._

She had only known, before this past week, what it felt like to have her mother's sinister, lingering presence; had only known what it was to be haunted, and hunted, through such a connection, and so she had not realised what she had left behind.

"The anchor point," she said, grimly, "I — I placed one in your mind, during the trial, so I could help you, remember?"

"Of course I do," he said, and though his brow furrowed, his tone did not quite soften. "But then you — you fainted, and the connection broke, and I assumed… wouldn't the anchor have broken, too?"

"No," she said, "It has to be deliberately removed, by a legilimens that knows it's there. Until it is, you'll — you would have sensed whenever I felt a particularly strong burst of emotion, especially…"

She recalled her father's words, after placing his own anchor point, what he'd warned her would happen: _You will feel my fear, like an alarm in your mind. You may even sense pain._ How many times had she felt both of those things, since she had placed the anchor…? Merlin, it was the beginning of July, and Gerald had evidently been feeling these powerful rings of emotion from her since _October_.

She shook her head, against the crushing realisation of her own idiotic negligence, against the persistent ache of her insides, against the weight of exhaustion that still pressed on her, from what felt like all sides.

"Gerald, I'm so sorry, I must have completely forgotten about it, with… with everything else that happened. I can't believe I did, but — I must have."

She expected him to be frightened, or perhaps even angry, at the realisation; she braced herself, thinking grimly that at least it would make it easier to push him away, once she'd done what she had to do.

She was not prepared for what he did say; she was not prepared for the quiet, hollow words that hit her like a curse, and so she flinched.

"So you've lied to me," he said, "Every single time since October that I _knew_ something was wrong, and you told me you were fine."

_Yes._ "No," she made herself say, and it was impossible not to be perversely proud of the way her words came out; mostly even, with the slight lilt of contrition; the intentional gravity of sincerity. "I never lied. I _am_ fine, or at least I was, until my father told me that the Dark Lord had returned; and of _course_ I'm terrified of that — aren't you?"

"Of course I am," Gerald echoed, and she could hear the flicker of uncertainty as he added: "But that wasn't the only time — Calista, I felt like you were hurt, or afraid, _so many times_."

"I'm sorry," she said, and she did not have to falsify the bitter shame that rolled through her blood, though once again, she was lying about the _reason_ for it. "I — it must have been my nightmares you were sensing, I —" Her throat pulsed so viciously now with the ache of her lies that it felt like she was swallowing her teeth, but she pressed on. "I just — I was embarrassed, I didn't want to admit I was having them so often…"

He frowned. She could see him considering her words. "That's why you don't like to stay the night, isn't it?"

"Yes."

At last, he softened; but her relief was short-lived, because in the space of a breath, he had crossed over to her chair again, and the press of his palm on her shoulder made her want to cry, suddenly, more than anything else had in the last twenty-four hours; maybe since October.

" _Mon c—"_ he started to say, but she could already feel dangerous things inside, things that made her afraid that she could not do what she _had_ to, and so she cut him off.

"The anchor point," she said, and the steadiness of her voice was such a mad juxtaposition to the way she felt inside that for an instant, her tired mind thought wildly that someone else must be speaking, "I have to remove it."

"Now?"

"The… the sooner, the better," she agreed, pretending not to register the incredulity in his voice, "I mean — we don't want to forget for another nine or ten months, do we?"

Gerald's mouth curled thoughtfully, and his free hand came to rest on her other shoulder. She felt a sudden spark of apprehension, though she wasn't quite certain why; but then, her entire life had become a trigger for apprehension, of late, hadn't it?

"Is it difficult to remove?" he asked, "Will it take a lot of effort?"

She had only ever removed anchor point from her _own_ mind, and she'd been fighting against the will of her mother, who had obviously wanted it to stay. She did know that the longer an anchor had been in place, the more difficult it was to remove; but how much effort _was_ it from the other side? She thought back to the night before; to her father's wan, grey face.

How much of that had been from the effort of removing the anchor, and how much of it had been simply from living through a series of agonising days, days so dark that even the ghost of them in the back of her mind had made _her_ into the aching, shivering wreck she felt like inside?

"I don't know," she answered, honestly, for once. ""It could be minutes, or it might be hours. It would be easier if— if you knew how to help, but… forget hours, it would probably take _months_ for me to teach you enough to do it."

"And you won't." There was a flicker of an edge, in his words, and she hadn't meant to say anything about why she'd come just yet; she'd wanted some measure of food in her stomach and some semblance of sleep behind her, but there was no reason to believe her wretched, exhausted body would embrace the latter any more than it had the former, and he was giving her a perfect opening.

"Actually, I will," she said, lifting her gaze to his; _Merlin,_ it hurt, to look at him, because she _wanted_ to press her head against him, to feel his arms come around her precisely as they had in that linked memory that she'd used to place the anchor in the first place; she wanted him to tell her _I love you_ , and to ease the softness of his mouth over her temple, and around the ridge of her ear, until she felt some echo of the _normal_ she'd been craving for what felt like eternity; but all of that would be cruel, now, for both of them.

Surprise widened his eyes, brows arching over the rim of his spectacles. "Erm — you _will_?"

"Yes," she said, and she took advantage of his surprise to slip her shoulder free, again, of his grasp, despite the sudden chill it gave her. "I'm going to teach you Occlumency, if you still want me to. I'll stay here this week, of course, like I told you last night; I think if we practise a lot, you'll be able to maintain two layers of defence, very soon. And after that… I'll come over, as often as you like, until…"

_Until I think you're safe enough, or until I can't stand seeing you and knowing it might be the last time_.

"Until you feel confident," she said, instead.

"I don't understand," Gerald said, bewildered, "You _always_ refused, before, every time I asked. Why have you suddenly changed your mind so fully that you'll be coming over every day to teach me?"

That, at least, was one question that she could afford to answer truthfully.

"The D — You-Know-Who is back. Nothing's the same, now, as it was."

They both shivered; and then he nodded, and suddenly his arms were around her, even though she'd resolved not to let them end up that way.

"All right," Gerald said, words vibrating at her ear, "We'll start the lessons tomorrow, then; and we'll address the anchor point and talk about what's coming. But for now —"

"I have to remove the anchor point today," she said, even as she was lifted gently out of the chair he'd placed her in; he shifted his grip, placing an arm at her waist, and taking up her hand again.

"Calista, your hands are freezing and you've been shivering for the last hour; Beyond that, I can see that Yellow must have scratched you up —" she suppressed an enormous wave of guilt as his eyes swept over the neckline of her top, "And thanks to the anchor point, I know full well that you've been sleeping terribly, if at all, for days."

"But —"

"You're going to bed," he said, rather as she had heard him tell more than one student out past curfew during his tenure as Head Boy, "And when you wake up, you're going to eat a proper meal, and _then_ we can move on to all the rest of it."

"At least let me try —"

"I absolutely will _not_ allow you to attempt a potentially draining feat of legilimency in the state you're currently in — which, incidentally, becauseof the anchor point, I know for a certainty is _not_ fine. We'll talk about it tomorrow, _mon colibri_."

He was right, she realised, as he led her through the living room and into the bedroom, still brightly lit from the evening sun. She hadn't caught more than a few hours' sleep at a time in days; exhausted didn't even begin to cover the strange, heavy-and-light trembling feeling inside her. She had no idea how difficult removing the anchor point would prove to be; and June or no, she _was_ freezing, at least until he plucked a quilt off his bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"I'll bring your trunk in," Gerald said, glancing out towards the living room where she'd left it earlier, "Unless you're comfortable with me opening it to —"

She was already lying down, unable to resist the warmth and softness of the bed, the glow of sunlight that just touched the edges of it from the balcony window at the far end of the room. She saw a soft, affectionate sort of smile flicker over his features, momentarily overtaking the weariness, the horror, of what Terry had told him and what she had grimly confirmed.

"I'll bring you some pajamas," he amended, just before the door eased shut behind him; for a moment, her ears stayed perked, expecting his return, but —

It took him an extraordinarily long time to find one of her nightdresses, or else it took her an extraordinarily _short_ time to fall asleep; and for once, it was dreamless.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald lifted the lid on Calista's yellow trunk. The top of it was jammed with books, which didn't surprise him in the least; despite the yawing, gaping pit that had taken residency in his stomach the moment Terry had told him about Professor Dumbledore's speech, he managed a small, fond sort of smile at the sheer number of books she'd crammed into the thing.

He reflected with the first spark of humour he'd felt all day that she must have an extraordinarily strong gift for Hover Charms, in addition to her Freezing Charm, in order to have gotten the heavy trunk all the way up to his third floor flat without help.

Finally, about halfway down, he hit fabric; he sifted through a silky, yellow length of fabric that he thought he recognised as a dress he'd seen her wear, and hurriedly cast aside a much smaller, lacier scrap of fabric that he _definitely_ remembered seeing her wear, though not for very long— ah, there. He saw a soft-looking, off-white edge that looked promising, and pulled it free.

His first thought was that he had made a mistake; he'd meant to grab a nightdress, and had ended up with — with —

His stomach heaved so forcefully that it _hurt_ , and his heart all but stopped; and then, it thudded and snagged like a struggling bird against his rib cage, as he realised what he was looking at.

The garment in his hands _was_ one of Calista's nightdresses, and it _had_ been white, before it had become utterly covered with blood.

_It's dye_ , his brain declared, but he knew instantly that it wasn't; and then, only slightly more plausible and discounted just as quickly: _It's from a spilled potion, or an animal, or —_

The sunlight streaming through the West window was soft and light, but it illuminated with an unbearable harshness the source of all the bloodstains on her nightdress: the six or eight diagonal slashes of darker, deeper blood on the untorn fabric. There were only a handful of curses he knew of that could make marks anything like what he was seeing on the nightdress, what his _mind_ was seeing on Calista's body, and none of them were anything close to 'nothing'.

A series of memories assaulted him, seemingly out of nowhere. He saw the stark lines of runes, stacks of mysterious scrolls, the curl of his own nearly bloodless fingers around a quill as he painstakingly translated one dark missive after another through endless night after endless night.

Then, as now, the truth had lined up in front of his eyes; it had presented itself in visions of blood and pain, in a pervading sense of _not right_ , and he had been so convinced of the unthinkable that he'd risked his job to warn Crouch's office; but then Chadwick had told him, calmly and reasonably, that he was wrong, that he'd misinterpreted, and he'd believed his cousin, partly because he loved him, and partly because he didn't want to believe the unthinkable.

The problem with that, he now saw with devastating clarity, was that the unthinkable had indeed come to pass; it was written in the awed horror in his little brother's face, when he'd relayed the words of Dumbledore's end-of-year address, and it was illustrated in the shadows underneath Calista's eyes when she'd quietly confirmed: _He's back._

An eerily similar pattern was forming now, in his mind, though the clues were different; the vicious, violent pattern of blood on Calista's nightdress, and the way one of the slashes ended just at the edge of the collar; the angry pink line he had glimpsed at the base of her neck, just where that slash would have ended; the agonising pulses of fear and pain at the back of his mind, and Calista's repeated chorus of _I'm fine, it's nothing._

How many times had she looked him straight in the eyes and lied? How many nights had he lain awake, a silent sentry to the litany of terror ringing through the back of his mind; and how many of _those_ nights would he have found her in danger or in pain, if he'd ignored her protests, her father's threats, and gone to her?

_I'm fine_ ; she said it all the time; and if he'd never quite believed her, he reluctantly accepted her repeated platitudes because she presented them reasonably and logically; and of course, because he loved her, and because… well, because he didn't want to believe the unthinkable.

_I've never lied_ , she'd said, only an hour ago, and there had been nothing in her face, her eyes, her voice that betrayed her. _I am fine; it must have been my nightmares you were sensing_.

"Let's verify that," Gerald muttered quietly, now. "Let's see just how long ago 'nothing' happened to you."

Clenching his jaw against the rolling in his stomach, Gerald carried the bloodied nightdress to the kitchen, and spread it carefully over the table.

He had researched blood magic, after Calista had told him that it had once been employed against her as a small child. He had wanted to understand, and he had admittedly been naïve enough and cocky enough to hope that he could uncover something she hadn't, some magical means of removing the scars that fueled so much of her undeserved self-loathing; and of course there was no such cure, but that didn't mean that his research had been utterly fruitless.

He had learned, for instance, that curses that inflicted bloodshed — particularly if they were Dark spells — would often leave behind some faint magical signature, though it would fade with time.

He had also learned that if a particular, complex series of spells were cast immediately following bloodshed that the events leading up to it could be preserved for hours, even days, allowing a variant of the _priori incantatem_ spell to be performed, to determine precisely how the blood had been spilled; but since it was incredibly doubtful that anyone had done that to Calista's nightdress, he would have to resort to some of the other spells he'd learned, and hope that not _too_ much time had passed, to glean as much as he could.

" _Sanguisaetas nunc reditio_ ," he tapped his wand to the most vivid of the slashes, and drew the tip of his wand against it in a quick, counter-clockwise circle. Nothing happened; but of course, the stains had to be more than an hour old, since she had been _here_ an hour ago. He repeated the spell, adding an additional twist around of his wand each time; at each interval of twelve hours, he substituted the circular motions for an east-west arc, indicating the passage of one day, hour to hour.

When he reached thirty-six hours back, he realised he was holding his breath; that, after all, was the last time that he had felt the agonising urgency of alarm in the back of his mind — but the nightdress told him nothing.

He went on and on, until he lost certainty that he was following the procedure correctly; and _then_ , just when he'd been close to giving up:

" _Sanguisaetas nunc reditio_ ," his wand twirled, drawing a series of arcs and loops over the fabric; and then there was a flash of light, and the stain directly beneath his wand shifted, shining briefly into liquid; rust turned to scarlet, and the tang of copper assaulted his nose.

It was only a moment, and then the fabric dried up again, the colour oxidised. He repeated the motion again, to be absolutely certain, and when he got the same result again, he snatched a sheet of parchment out of one of his kitchen drawers, and wrote down the pattern that had finally activated the dormant blood magic in the garment.

" _Accio calendar_ ," he said, and as the calendar flew across the room into his fingers, he calculated the hours that were represented in the symbols he'd written down, matching up each arc, sliding his finger backwards along the line of days, until his finger stopped at the end of the pattern; and suddenly, the struggling bird was back, beating against the inside of ribs, sinking its talons firmly into his heart.

June twenty-fourth. The Dark magic that had stained Calista's nightdress with a terrifying amount of blood had been performed on the evening of June twenty-fourth; the night of the third task; the night that he had sensed her fear so acutely that he had called her on the fire, only to be firmly shut out. In fact, by the calculation of his spell, it had happened within the hour that he had spoken to her; and another memory, this one from only hours ago, cut across the forefront of his mind:

_I knew about it the night I went back to Hogwarts to tell my father what I'd remembered,_ Calista had told him, of Lord Voldemort's return, and: _They cancelled the tournament, partway through the last task._

She had managed not tell him precisely _how_ she'd found out that Lord Voldemort was back, and now his mind could not help but draw the most horrifying conclusion imaginable.

Once, he might have been able to convince himself that he was wrong; once, he would have believed that Calista would not, _could not_ lie to him about something so critical, so terrible; but the stained cloth on the table was a cruel counterpoint.

When was the last time that she had actually told him the _truth_? He had nothing to go on but shadowed eyes and chill fingers and the insistent, flickering pulse of fear in the back of his mind, and even with all of that, she had still locked her eyes on his and told him, utterly evenly: _I'm fine. Nothing happened_ , and for most of a year, he'd ignored everything inside him that told him it wasn't true, hadn't considered that this was the same person who had run off in the middle of the night to face a werewolf and a horde of dementors with little more than a _bloody Freezing Charm_ , and had told no one where she was going.

Panic had threatened to drown him, in the moment that he'd first laid eyes on the telltale nightdress, but busying himself with investigating it had steadied his hands and his heart; and now that a series of frightening and disheartening questions were occurring to him, he knew that he had to counter his rising anxiety with the two things that never failed to rescue him from the clutches of fear: information, and action.

He cast a look towards the bedroom door, and he was sorely tempted to barge in, then, and confront Calista with what he knew; but his hands were trembling, and the wild bird in his chest was threatening to take flight, and it was almost a certainty that he would say a great many regrettable things, if he saw her now. It would be better if he could think, first, and plan.

He set a couple of charms on the door, one that would soften any sound from the rest of the flat from breaching it, and a second one that would alert him with a soft chime if she opened it. He set the latter one grimly, forcing himself to acknowledge the very real possibility that she would try to slip out, in the middle of the night.

He was only slightly reassured by the reminder, quite literally in the back of his mind, that he had a small amount of leverage to keep her here.

It was a long night; as the hours passed and the shadows outside first deepened and then softened, Gerald divided his time between stacks of books and papers, and the simmering heat of a cauldron that had replaced the nightdress on the table. By the time that dawn's fingers began to tap at the living room window, his shoulders ached and his brow was slick with sweat; but he felt satisfied that he had understood enough of the pattern, this time, to act.

He knew she would argue reasonably and logically; and then, when that failed, she would argue unreasonably and viciously. He was not looking forward to that, but he was prepared for it, prepared to press doggedly on, this time, as he had not before: because he loved her, and because he finally realised that he had been staring into the face of the unthinkable all along.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was full daylight when Calista woke, alone in Gerald's single bed. She couldn't remember him coming in, but she suspected she'd been so soundly asleep that a literal hippogriff could have crawled into bed beside her, and she'd have been none the wiser; the thought gave her a small flicker of amusement, and she almost considered checking the bed for feathers.

The ghost of her smile died on her face, almost as soon as it had formed, as she remembered why she was here, what she had to do.

The anchor point, that was going to have to be first; and once it was gone, she'd begin teaching him how to build a proper second wall, in his mind. And then…

She had intended on teaching him as much as she reasonably could, and _then_ breaking the news, but it was plain to her now that she did not have the willpower to follow that plan. All it had taken was a brief moment of warmth, his arms around her, his mouth on her ear, and she had ached so thoroughly to hug him, to kiss him, to tell him everything — in short, to ensure that he _would_ become a tool for the Dark Lord to ensnare her with.

_I'll remove the anchor point now, first thing,_ she told herself, and then… _And then, somehow, I have to find a way to tell him that the only reason I'm here is to teach him Occlumency._

What would she give him, for a reason, when she told him she was breaking things off? If she told him the truth, she thought he might not listen; that he might insist on helping her face whatever was coming next, just as she'd helped him face his father — but of course, it wasn't the same thing _at all_ ; and it was her Patronus, of all things, that reminded her why she had to do this cleanly, and utterly, and _now_ , before she lost her dwindling resolve.

There was no use dwelling, now; she would have to hope that the right words would come to her, once the anchor point was taken care of. She realised bitterly that she could tell him anything she wanted to; he would have no way, once the anchor was removed, of seeing through her.

Two things assaulted her the moment she opened the bedroom door; the telltale chime of a perimeter alert spell, and a powerful mixture of scents; it was something delicious mingled with something earthy and clean; it was rather as if someone had mixed the scent of Gerald's cooking with the scent of Gerald _himself._

"Good morning," Gerald said, from the kitchen, calling over the half-wall, "You have impeccable timing; I'm almost finished cooking breakfast."

"I'm not hungry," she said, her first lie of the morning, "I have to — we should work on that anchor point, now. And what was the alert spell for, by the way?"

He set a pair of heaping omelettes down on the kitchen table. "As it happens, I don't believe you," he said, a bit more sharply than she'd expected, "So we'll discuss the anchor point after we've eaten."

He laid two mugs on the table next; one filled with a fragrant tea, and the other with more of the mud-coffee he'd had on offer the day before. If she hadn't felt so wretched, she might have sourly considered breaking up with him on the grounds of foisting _that_ off on her, alone.

It seemed disingenuous, somehow, to allow him to feed her, when she knew what was coming, and he didn't; but if she _didn't_ eat, he'd almost certainly be suspicious, and he might try to delay the removal of the anchor point, again. Besides, she had a sinking, guilt-ridden feeling that she was going to need the fortification.

She directed her attention to the omelette, primarily so she could avoid looking at _him_ ; but the smell of the wretched not-coffee was turning her stomach, and there was something _else_ pulling at her nose, some other scent that belonged with him, but did not belong with eggs…

"Why do I smell dittany?" she asked, as the realisation hit her, and when she lifted her gaze, she could see that Gerald's attention was fixed on her, rather than on his hardly-touched plate of eggs.

"I made a concentrated healing paste last night," Gerald told her, and his eyes swept pointedly to her collarbone; she flushed, and scowled, dropping her fork to pull the neckline of her shirt up.

"Why? This is nothing. Like you said, I just picked Yellow up too quickly, and —"

"That isn't true," Gerald said, evenly and quietly, "Yellow didn't do that to you."

"What? Of course he did."

"If that's the case," Gerald said, and though his tone was light, she could hear a strained tightness hovering just beneath his words, "Then perhaps I should owl the _Daily Prophet_ ; I imagine a cat that can cast Dark magic would make the front page."

" _Excuse me?_ "

"I found your nightdress," Gerald said, and his voice cracked just slightly. "The one you were wearing, on the night that you said you went to Hogwarts and found out You-Know-Who had returned."

_Fuck._ Too late, Calista remembered that she had thrown all of her things haphazardly into her trunk, the morning before, everything that she'd had at Hogwarts.

"At least I know it wasn't a werewolf that attacked you, this time," Gerald went on, and aside from that first crack of emotion, his voice was almost conversational, "The — the wounds were too symmetrical for that."

"What do you want, Gerald?"

"Isn't it obvious? I want you to tell me the _truth._ " He frowned, pushing his untouched mug of tea aside, and rising from his seat.

"Actually," he clarified, "To be perfectly honest, I _want_ you to stop putting yourself in dangerous situations, but I'm not certain you're capable of keeping that promise, so I'll settle for knowing about it _before_ I hear you screaming in the back of my mind."

"I didn't go to Hogwarts _expecting_ a duel, you know," she said, rising too, "I went to talk to my father, because I had that damn dream again, about Moody, only _this_ time I remembered that his voice, the way he said my name, reminded me of someone."

"Who?"

"Bartemius Crouch, Junior," she said; she was perversely satisfied when his expression flickered. _There_. Perhaps if she reminded him exactly who she was — exactly the sorts of people she had been exposed to, he would take the rest of this, their inevitable parting of ways, with less resistance. "He came to our house, when I was small, to talk to my mother, and he saw me; he said my name, and I finally remembered that Moody said it exactly the same way, when I duelled him outside my father's office."

"How?" Gerald asked, brow furrowed, "Bartemius Crouch died in custody while he was in Azkaban. I'm certain I read that, when I was —" he shook his head slightly, and with a little more force: "I'm certain I read that."

"Yes, well," Calista said, "The Dark Lord's been back for over a week and the _Daily Prophet_ hasn't printed one word about it. It would appear that they get things wrong, from time to time; and I'm telling you, they were wrong about _him_. I went to Hogwarts to warn my father, only I ran into Moody — Crouch — first. We duelled; I lost, to a bloody _Shield Charm_ , of all things. Crouch got away while my father was healing the —," she swallowed; her tone might have bordered on cavalier, but it wasn't what she _felt_ , reliving that terrifying night. "Healing what you saw the evidence of, and he took Harry Potter with him."

She explained the rest of it quickly; how her father and Dumbledore had pressed her for anything else she could remember. There were gaps, still, in her memory from that night; moments when she'd been too unsteady to concentrate on anything besides keeping her feet, and she stumbled through those parts of the story, minimising the effects of the duel; and of course, she did not tell him about the sticky, foggy remnants of the Imperius Curse, the dark, sickeningly familiar lines on her father's forearm; of course she did not tell him about the way she had clung helplessly to her father, digging her nails in when Dumbledore had asked him to go find Potter.

"Potter made it back, somehow," she finished, "He got away; and he told us — he said 'He's back'." She shivered, recalling the poor boy's pale, stricken face; the blood that was caked on his arm, splattered on his face. He was Draco's age, and he had faced the Dark Lord; he had not even looked, to Calista, like he should have been able to face a grindylow.

"All right," Gerald finally said, and she noticed that during her retelling, he had slowly shifted his position, and he now blocked her exit from the kitchen, just as he had the night before. "That's one of the times, then, that I heard you. What about the rest of them? What about two days ago?"

She knew instantly what he had sensed, that day; it had been one of the worst days of her life. It turned her stomach into a rock to think that he had been standing his own sentry, that same day; feeling her anguish, just as she had felt her father's; and it reminded her, painfully, of exactly why this could not continue.

"I told you, I've been having nightmares," she said, sliding her gaze away from him. "But you won't feel it anymore, once I remove the anchor point. We should… we should do it, now."

Gerald's frown deepened, and she felt a stab of guilt; and then, he exhaled, and his expression shifted, again, hardening.

"This wasn't my first choice," he said, and suddenly, inexplicably, his Head Boy voice was back. "If you'll recall, I asked you to tell me the truth; but it's plain that you won't do so reliably, and since I have no other way of knowing when you're in danger — I'm going to keep it."

Calista blinked. "You're going to — what? Keep _what_?"

"The anchor point," he said, and though it seemed that he couldn't possibly have meant anything else, the words still hit her, like a Blasting Curse, in the gut. "I did a lot of research last night, and it seems that keeping it won't do any harm beyond making it more difficult to remove, later; furthermore, it seems that with enough concentration and practise, I should be able to learn to trace the call back to you; I should be able to determine, within a reasonable proximity, where you are, so I can come to you."

" _What?_ " The word tore out of her throat, savage and clawed. "You — you will do no such thing!" Her blood was on fire; but it was not the heat of rage, that pressed at her skin; it was sharp, cutting terror. "What — what books did you even _find_ that in?"

He was remarkably calm, in the face of her explosion, and that sparked an insistent suspicion in the back of her mind that he had possibly expected the conversation to go this way; and that _did_ allow a lick of anger to flicker through her chest.

"I'm afraid I had to borrow a few of your books," Gerald said, and it was maddening how firmly and how _matter-of-factly_ he stood there, blocking her exit, "But if it's any consolation, I promise I was very careful with the spines."

_What the hell?_ Something frothed in her gut, and for a moment, she was afraid she was going to vomit, in the middle of his kitchen — but when her mouth opened, all that bubbled out was an inexplicable, hysterical bubble of _laughter_.

"Careful with the —" _Merlin, she was losing it._ "No," she said, shaking her head, "Gerald, you can't do this. I… I know you think you're doing the right thing, but you're wrong. You've got to let me remove it."

"I will," he said, quite sincerely; but her relief was short-lived. "As soon as I believe that you'll tell me when you're going to do something dangerous. Perhaps I'll have learned enough to help, by then, if you really were sincere in your offer to teach me Occlumency."

"I —" _Fuck_. He _couldn't_ do this, he couldn't refuse to let her remove the anchor; and if he really intended to use the connection it gave him to her mind to _track her down_ , then the urgency to be rid of it was suddenly tenfold.

"You can't actually stop me," she said, quietly, hating herself utterly for this particular truth. "I'm strong enough to reach it, whether you want me to or not; I _will_ remove it."

His throat jumped, but his expression remained immovable. "I do realise that," he said, "And I — I suppose I _can't_ stop you, any more than I've ever been able to stop you running off to face hordes of dementors without the ability to summon a Patronus, or extending yourself beyond reasonable limits, or — or duelling escaped Death Eaters; but you did promise me once that you would not invade my mind against my will. We were… we were discussing memory modification, then —"

Another searing bolt of guilt shot through her.

"But I do see this as being rather the same thing, in the end."

"How is it the same?" she challenged, voice thick with emotion, "This is something — it doesn't belong to you. This is part of _me_ , a piece of my mind, that you won't let me take back from yours."

"I told you, I read some of your books," Gerald said, softly, "It might be part of you, but it's _also_ part of me; the memory it's anchored to belongs to both of us. And I — I don't believe you're really the sort of person that would break into my mind and take it, by force — but if I'm wrong, if you are…"

_Damn it._ Of course she was not; of course she _could not_.

"I want you to understand that I'm going to fight you, as hard as I can," he finished, "Because I _love_ you, and that doesn't just mean — it's not just poems, and flowers, and sex. It means that I intend to be there, through _all_ of your nightmares, waking or not."

Her eyes blurred, and her heart stung; because if there was anything she had learned, over the last few days, it was that she _wanted_ this, wanted him; she wanted to believe, more than anything, that she was what he had said, the sort of girl that deserved the kind of love he was offering; but all she could hear was the echo of her father's words:

_Such leverage is the only thing the Dark Lord understands about love, but he understands it devastatingly well._

She felt the sudden warmth of his palm, against her shoulder, and _then_ , the brush of his thumb, heartbreakingly soft, just under her eye.

" _Mon c_ —" Gerald started, but Calista sucked in a massive, shaking breath, and wrenched her shoulder away from him, and stepped back, throat aching with the most difficult lie she thought she might ever tell:

"I don't want that, anymore," she said, heavily. "I don't want you, anymore."

She made herself look at him, braced herself for the inevitably wounded look to cross his feature; and something did flicker across his features, but she was too weary and too full of self-loathing to interpret it.

"All right," he said, very softly; several beats of silence stretched between then, and each one felt like the weight of a hippogriff landing on her chest.

At long last, he nodded, and stepped forward, and she thought wildly that he was going to try to touch her again, despite what she'd just said, despite what he'd evidently agreed to, but he strode past her, instead, and she heard a soft scraping sound as he drew something across the surface of the kitchen counter.

"You'd better apply this sooner, rather than later," he said, holding something out to her; it was a glass jar, and it smelled strongly of dittany, and _he_ smelled strongly of parchment, and oh, Merlin, this was a thousand times more painful that she'd even imagined.

"I —" _lied; I love you._ She shook her head. "I'll apply it later," she said, forcing the words past the lump in her throat, "I want to remove the anchor point, first. And then I… I should probably go."

She didn't know _where_ she'd go, since her father didn't want her to go home or to go to Malfoy Manor; but it was becoming painfully clear that she should not, _could not_ , stay here.

"I thought I was quite clear on that matter," Gerald said, "Unless you _are_ planning on forcing me to fight you?"

"What? But — but I just told you, I'm not — _we're_ not — I'm breaking up with you."

"Yes, I understood that; and you have my word that I won't offer you flowers, or poems, or sex unless you change your mind."

"You can't _do_ this. You have no idea — you don't understand what you'd be getting into — what are you even going to _do_ , if you think you hear me in your mind, and follow me somewhere? I've evidently already managed to draw Crouch's attention, and — and —"

She suppressed a cold shiver of fear, and pressed ruthlessly on.

"You think you'll fare better against — against Crouch, or — or the Dark Lord himself than _I_ will? Merlin's blood, Gerald, you're almost twenty years old, and you can't even see _thestrals_."

_There_. It was savage, and it was cruel, but it was _true_. Perhaps now, he would understand why she was not at all the sort of girl he had thought she might be; perhaps now, he would realise why he was not at all equipped to face the same sorts of nightmares that she would inevitably have to, because of _who she was_ ; not just Bellatrix Lestrange's daughter, but _Severus Snape's_ daughter, and she couldn't even tell him why that, too, was dangerous, now.

He flinched, then, and Calista wondered bitterly if he could feel her pain, now, through the anchor point, because it was surely as fierce as it had ever been…

"No, I can't see them," Gerald admitted, bitterly. "Although I'm not certain what it is you're trying to prove by bringing that up — unless you want to be the reason I finally can, some day. Is that it? You want me to — to stay safely tucked away until you _do_ manage to get yourself killed, and then I'll finally have earned the right to be useful to you?"

Ah, so it was possible to hurt even more; and _damn it,_ the kitchen had gone all blurry again, and would she _ever_ have a day again that didn't make her eyes and her throat burn so incessantly?

"You just — you have no idea, Gerald, no idea at all…"

"I was the same age that you were, when You-Know-Who was in power the last time," he said, still bitter and still quiet, "And my mother is a Muggle. You think my father didn't _delight_ in telling me what might happen to her, if _I_ slipped up enough to give him a reason to bring the Death Eaters to our door? And then — and then when I was older, and I realised he'd never really had the power to do that, I met _you_ , and you had been through every horror I'd only imagined and then some, and I wanted to understand how to help you, and so when you told me who your mother was, I researched every last thing she'd done, to end up in Azkaban; and I researched Crouch and the other one, the other Lestrange, too, that were arrested with her; I _know_ all the depraved things they've done, even if I didn't see it firsthand."

"It isn't the same. Reading, and hearing; it isn't the same as facing them."

"No, I suppose it isn't," Gerald said, "But I _do_ know what I'm getting into; and the point isn't that I'd fare better than you, by the way, in a duel, it's that _both_ of us would fare better, together; the point is, that if I'd followed you to Hogwarts that night, you wouldn't have those new scars. You wouldn't have gotten hurt."

She choked on a half-snarl, half-sob. "You can't — you can't possibly know that."

"Actually, yes I can; I _do_ know that, because — because —" He exhaled, and his mouth pressed briefly into a line, and then:

"Hold still," he said, "I swear I'm not going to hurt you, but there's something I need to show you."

He shifted, and drew his wand with his free hand, the one that was not still clutching the jar of dittany.

"What are you doing?"

" _Protega Corporis_ ," Gerald said, pointing his wand at her, and a glittering, silvery light floated from his wand towards her; he shifted again, keeping his attention and his wand carefully trained, and flicked his wrist in a complicated motion. The silvery light moved and changed, and then it attached itself to her.

It was like a second skin, and it moved when she did; and then he cast a second spell, a brief, familiar flick of the wrist.

" _Locomotor Mortis_ ," he said, and she flinched, bracing herself for a fall — but the skin-shield around her flickered and darkened, and then it began to drift apart in wisps; but it didn't matter, it had blocked the spell.

Calista's heart rattled, as Gerald lowered his wand.

_He did it_ , she thought, faintly awed, _He actually did it — he invented an Armour Charm._

"It still needs some work," he said, "It only lasts a few seconds, without being sustained; but I've tested it against at least thirty curses now, and it absorbs them all."

"That's _brilliant_. Why haven't you written to the Experimental Charms Committee about it? Why haven't you told _me_?"

"It still needs work," he said again, and then: "I _did_ tell you, dozens of times, that I was making progress. You never seemed very interested. Perhaps because it's not a thestral."

Another hurt pierced her heart, then; and whatever else it did to her, it was enough, finally to quell the last of her anger; it was enough to make her realise that Gerald was _still_ holding the jar of dittany, clenched between narrow, but capable, fingers.

"I'm sorry I said that," she managed; but that was as much as she could make herself say, in that moment.

"I'm not useless," Gerald said, quietly. "I'll be even _less_ useless if you'll actually keep your word and train me to be a better Occlumens."

"I don't think you're useless, Gerald. I never did; don't you understand? _The Dark Lord is back_ , and I need — I need you to be safe; I need to protect you."

He took a breath, and nodded. He slipped his wand back into his pocket, and then, tentatively, he reached for her hand. She let him take it, too weary and shell-shocked to resist; and despite everything she'd resolved, she ached for him to run his mouth over her fingers, to press his lips to her palm, and to undo every wretched thing she'd put between them.

He didn't do any of that. Instead, he gently uncurled her fingers, and then he pressed the jar of dittany into her palm, and closed her fingers around it.

"I'm perfectly willing to let you do that," Gerald said, "After all, I certainly never thought _you_ were useless; but you're going to have to learn to accept that it goes both ways. You protect me, and I'll protect you; and with any luck, we'll _both_ make it through this nightmare. Ah, and Calista?"

She took in a soft, shuddering breath; one that tasted like dittany and smelled like fresh parchment.

"Yes?"

His Head Boy demeanour was suddenly back, as he clenched his fingers over her, around the jar.

"Apply the damn paste, please."

"I will, in a minute. But there's something I need to tell you, first."

"I really don't want to hear another word about the anchor point," he said, "I'm not changing my mind."

"It isn't that." She lifted her free hand, and laid it gently over his, and hers, and the jar; it was not exactly romantic, but it was also a far cry from the distance she'd spent the last two days — no, the last _six months_ — trying to cultivate.

"I love you, too."

It wasn't enough, yet, to span the gap she'd so carefully constructed between them; it wasn't enough to heal all of the hurts she'd caused, with both her silences and her words; but it was a start, and like the smooth jar of dittany paste she held in her fist, if she applied it consistently enough, there was still a chance that the scars would never show.


End file.
